


Things You Never Asked For

by teyla



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Case Fic, Chronic Illness, Farah Black is Terrifyingly Competent, Holistic Detecting, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Tina Tevetino, Neither Dirk nor Todd Know How to People, Oblivious Dirk Gently, POV Dirk Gently, Post-Canon, Todd Brotzman is Bad at Feelings, some fantasy elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 49,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24508963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teyla/pseuds/teyla
Summary: The Holistic Detective Agency has a new case. At least Dirk thinks they do. Nobody's hired them, no obvious crime was committed, but things sure are happening. And there's Dirk's friendship with Todd, which has taken a turn for the terribly confusing. Stumbling from one disaster to the next, Dirk tries to make sense of it all with, well, arguable efficiency.
Relationships: Todd Brotzman/Dirk Gently
Comments: 95
Kudos: 100





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a couple of years ago and never got around to posting it. I've cleaned it up now and will be posting regular updates, probably once or twice a week. Enjoy, and if you like it, do let me know!
> 
> Thank you so much to [Neery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neery) for beta'ing.
> 
> The title is from a quote:
> 
>  _“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.”_  
>  \- Lemony Snicket

Walking isn’t as easy as it should be.

It’s really quite a complex process. It takes most humans a year or more to learn even the most rudimentary principle of it. Balance, coordination, and spatial perception come together in an intricate process which, quite astonishingly, happens without much effort for most people most of the time.

Most of the time. Other times, it's harder. Especially when you've just been stabbed.

It’s quite bad. It might not be as bad as when he had two harpoons sticking in his shoulder, but then, he’s not a medical doctor, so it might very well be worse. Either way, it’s not making walking any easier. Having something to lean on would make walking easier, but his only option are the houses lining the alley, and they seem inconceivably far away. Better to go forward than sideways.

“Hey. Are you all right?”

It’s a lilting accent with drawn-out vowels. Not American. The voice is soft, the words slow and deliberate. A squirrel would sound like that, Dirk thinks. A round, chubby squirrel with a soft coat, not the kind with sharp teeth. A _nice_ squirrel.

Then, there’s a hiss belonging to the human version of a decidedly not-so-nice lizard.

“The fuck you think you’re doing?”

“He’s hurt, Chester.”

From the alley’s shadows steps a tall figure, rounded shoulders suggesting a hunched back. Possibly hunched on purpose; standing up straight, the man would be nearly twice as tall as Dirk.

“Are you all right?” he says again in his chubby squirrel voice.

“I don’t believe I am, no.” It’s a stupid reflex, really, to look down and lift his hands off his side to inspect the damage. The sight of his fingers slick with blood and his shirt well and truly ruined makes his vision tunnel.

“Hey. Come on. Over here.”

Now he is going sideways, after all, directed by Mr. Squirrel, towards more hissing from Mr. Lizard, a.k.a. Chester.

“This isn’t what we’re meant to be doing, Oswald. This is the opposite of what we’re meant to be doing.”

“I really don’t mean to inconvenience.” The words float from his mouth. He half-expects to see them materialize as butterfly shapes and flutter away. Blood loss is wild. “If you’d be so kind as to call 911, I’d be more than happy to sit here and wait for them.”

That is what he means to say. He has a feeling he may have missed a word or two.

“What?” Chester’s impatient. He’s giving off a wrong-bad, fingernails-on-chalkboard feeling that makes the tips of Dirk’s fingers tingle. He scoots closer to Oswald.

“Sorry.” That one comes out all right. Single words, then.

“For Christ’s sake.”

“I’m taking him to the hospital.” The hand on Dirk’s arm nudges, and Dirk stumbles against something metal. 

“Great idea. Why don’t you drop us off at the county jail on the way?”

He’s being maneuvered into the passenger seat of what seems to be a transport van. The musty smell of grimy floor mats creeps into his nose, together with the much stronger scent of old kebab and sweet-and-sour sauce. His throat constricts, and he’s about to dreadfully embarrass himself by retching all over the dashboard when the slam of the door startles him into swallowing his gag reflex.

“I’m going, Chester.” Oswald’s voice is quiet, muffled by the door. Dirk leans the side of his face against the window. The glass is cool and soothing, and the way his ear is pressed against it, he can follow the conversation quite easily. “You don’t have to come along.”

“I don’t have to, but the merchandise does. What do you think Mr. Boyd will have to say about you taking the merch for a spin past the ER cops?”

“Do you plan on telling?”

There’s no answer. A few moments later the van dips under the weight of Oswald settling into the driver’s seat. Dirk raises a hand, half a gesture of gratitude, half a feeble attempt to steady the van.

“No crime talk doctors.”

This time he’s not even sure himself what he meant to say. Oswald points a narrow glare at him. It’s like he’s the Cheshire Cat, except instead of being reduced to a smile, all that’s left of him are two deep-set eyes with a set of bushy eyebrows. “Don’t talk.”

“Don’t talk,” Dirk agrees and closes his eyes.

\------

He opens them to something very bright and loud and unpleasant. It’s perfectly reasonable to immediately close them again. The next time he opens them, the brightness has changed to the muted lights of a recovery room.

The fact that he has no trouble identifying the room by the lighting is somewhat alarming, but as it goes with recovery rooms, he’s too high to care. A pleasant nurse brings a cup of pleasant ice chips. Less pleasant is the coughing fit that happens when he sucks on one of them a little too hard and gets the ice-cold water down the wrong pipe. When his breathing has settled, he allows his eyelids to slide shut and wonders, as he slips back under, if Oswald got into a lot of trouble with Mr. Boyd for helping him out.

He sincerely hopes not.

\------

Before long, the stretches of consciousness get longer, and Dirk is reminded that hospitals are institutions that master the antithetical balancing act of being both incredibly boring and incredibly unsettling.

He’s on the surgical floor now, and shares his room with a neatly made, unoccupied bed. A friendly floor mate was kind enough to make one of the first things to share with Dirk the fact that the previous occupant was transferred to a ventilator bed in the ICU after suffering a pulmonary embolism. Dirk has been trying his best not to look at the bed ever since.

The nurses made him get up the moment he arrived. It was as painful as it was exhausting, and he’s been sternly told not to try on his own. The muggers took his phone, and he’s not in the habit of carrying a book—even if he were, they’d probably have taken that, too—so to fight off the restless boredom, he’s turned on the television. The current channel seems to show nothing but old ITV crime dramas.

Excellent. It’s not the first time that Monsieur Hercule Poirot has saved his sanity.

The pleasant predictability of _The Million Dollar Bond Robbery_ lulls him into a semi-doze that he startles out of when the door cracks open to admit a timid head of tousled, not-quite-curly hair.

“Dirk!”

“Todd!”

The hair belongs to Todd Brotzman, holistic detective assistant by trade and Dirk’s best friend by singularity. The sight of him puts a smile on Dirk’s face so wide it hurts his cheeks. Mortifyingly, he feels moisture rise in his eyes. He blinks it away and struggles to sit up. Stupid pain medication. “It’s so nice to see you, Todd.”

“Jesus Christ. What happened to you?”

Todd has stopped at the foot of the bed to stare at him. Upon closer inspection, he looks—hm. Frazzled. Todd looks frazzled. “I got mugged,” Dirk answers the question. “What happened to _you_?”

“What?”

“You look—” Dirk trails off, derailed by the way Todd’s face does that thing he does. It seems like every one of Todd’s expressions eventually leads to a scowl. “You look angry, actually. Are you?”

Todd’s eyes close, and while Dirk doesn’t know the cause, he recognizes barely contained despair when he sees it. “No,” Todd says slowly. Opens his eyes. “No, Dirk. I’m not angry. What I am is tired. And worried. I’ve been up all night looking for you.”

“Oh.” That makes sense, actually. He left the agency yesterday and never came back. “ _Oh_. I—” He pats his pockets, or rather, he pats the blanket where his pockets would have been if he were wearing trousers. “They took my phone, Todd. I’m sorry, I would’ve called you.”

“It’s—fine. It’s fine.” Todd shakes his head, and now he looks like he’s the one blinking away moisture. “I’m just glad we found you.”

He pulls over a chair. Dirk tries to ignore the pang he feels when he realizes there’s not going to be a hug. Ever since The Incident, Todd avoids most physical contact.

“Okay, so—” Todd’s hands twist into one another. His eyes flit over the heart monitor and the IV next to Dirk’s bed. “You got mugged? Did they, um. Hit you?”

His scrutiny turns to Dirk’s wholly unblemished face. Dirk squints. “No. Actually. They didn’t at all. They just stabbed me.”

“ _Stabbed_ you?”

“Yes, right here.” Dirk lifts the blankets a little to expose his side, and the moderately blood-stained gauze that covers it. It’s the side that’s turned away from Todd, so he’s not sure Todd can even see. Honestly, that’s probably best. Todd already looks a little pale around the nose. “I’m not really sure why they felt the need to stab me. I gave them everything they asked for. Well.” He pauses.

“Well?”

“They asked for my jacket.”

Todd groans, and the sound is so familiar that it makes Dirk’s chest tighten with fondness. “Please tell me you didn’t get stabbed for a jacket.”

“I didn’t! I was going to give it to them.” He shrugs. “I think it was more that I didn’t give it to them quickly enough.”

“For Christ’s sake.”

“Besides,” and Dirk tucks the blanket back down, “I didn’t get stabbed for a jacket. I got stabbed for a case.”

“Which case?”

“Our case!” Todd gives him a blank stare of incomprehension. Dirk rolls his eyes. “Really, Todd, as my assistant, you should keep up with these things.”

“We haven’t had a case in weeks! Ever since we opened the agency proper. The most detecting we’ve done was last night, when Farah and I went looking for you after you didn’t come back from your—”

“From my what?”

Todd points a suspicious finger at him. “You did say you were going to check out a case. When you left, you said you were going to investigate a lead in a new case.”

Dirk raises his eyebrows. Todd throws up his hands. “What, the new case is you getting stabbed?”

“Of course not!” A twinge in his side reminds him that gesticulating is a bad idea. He winces and lowers his hands. “The new case has got something to do with merchandise. I’m fairly certain Oswald and Chester are involved. And a van.”

“A van?”

“Yes.” Dirk nods. His eyelids are getting heavy. He gives Todd a smile. “It positively reeks of kebab.”

“Right.” Todd’s annoyed expression gives way to something softer. “You don’t happen to have a license plate, do you?”

“Of course not, Todd.” He yawns, and belatedly remembers to raise a hand to cover it. “It was dark. And I was bleeding quite badly.”

“Right.” Todd’s scrutinizing him again, and there’s something in his eyes that looks a lot like concern. Todd probably wouldn’t like the fact that Dirk can spot it, but Todd’s eyes are quite big and tend to hide very little. “I should call Farah. Let her know that I found you.”

“Mhm.” Dirk nods. As he blinks, he’s surprised to find that his eyes are halfway closed. “Tell her not to worry. I’m really quite all right.”

“Right. Of course you are.”

Todd’s voice is getting quieter. Something heavy settles on Dirk’s blanketed leg. Just before he dozes off, he realizes it’s probably Todd’s hand.

It makes him smile.


	2. Chapter 2

They let him out soon enough. As much as hospitals seem eager to confine you to small, non-descript rooms, they are just as eager to get rid of you the moment you can stand up on your own.

Todd points out that Dirk won't take proper care of himself if left alone, and suggests (insists) that Dirk come stay with him for a few days. Dirk almost ends up spending the next few nights on the amalgamation of lumps that Todd calls a couch, if it weren't for Farah, who makes the convincing argument that getting any meaningful rest while cooped up in a tiny studio apartment that’s still not recovered from the trashing it received three months ago and that is possibly being rented out by a drug cartel will be next to impossible.

Todd points out that Dirk’s new place is neither tiny nor particularly drug-cartel-y, which is how on his first night of freedom, Dirk ends up watching Todd pull bedding from the drawer of Dirk’s sofa bed.

“Do you even have any food in?”

“I’m not a savage, Todd.” Dirk makes his way to the fridge. “I am capable of basic personal maintenance like feeding myself, despite what you seem to believe.”

“All right.” Todd, apparently content to leave the rest of the bed-making for later, leans his elbows on the counter. “What’s for dinner, then?”

Dirk inspects the fridge and finds that there’s really no good way to spin this. “It seems we have the choice between a bottle of frozen brown sauce and ice.”

Todd snorts. “You sure that’s not your freezer?”

“I don’t have a freezer. Why do you think I keep my fridge at freezing temperatures?” Dirk nudges the fridge shut before Todd can spot the box of kibble that’s sitting in the back of it. It’s not that he eats kibble, it’s just that it looked a lot like a box of peanuts at the shop.

He snags a take-out menu off of the fridge door. “I prefer take-out, anyway. It’s more nutritious.”

“Than ice?”

“Are you telling me it’s not?”

Todd holds up his hands, and Dirk gives a satisfied nod. “This is all pizza,” he says with distaste as he inspects the menu.

“What’s wrong with pizza?”

“It’s meant to be Chinese.” Once the words are out of his mouth, he knows them to be true. It’s usually like that with his hunches.

“There’s a Chinese place on the corner.” Todd doesn’t question him, which is more of a thrill than it probably should be. “You up for a walk?”

They make their way down the Seattle sidewalk past the Goodwill and Trader Joe’s. Dirk keeps an eye out for anything that feels important, but beyond this sudden craving for wontons, the universe is keeping quiet.

So is Todd, actually, silently walking half a step ahead and peering into the dimness of the clear November evening that surrounds them. None of Dirk’s chatter (about the hospital stay, about the neighbourhood, even about a passing-by pug’s too-tight harness) rouses as much as a comment, until Dirk mentions that they should consider investing in a camera surveillance system at the agency offices.

“Good idea,” says Todd right away. His shoulders nudge up into even more of a hunch. “Especially at the entrance. So we can see who’s at the door.”

“Okay.” Dirk’s happy enough to find Todd so agreeable, but slightly put off by his demeanour. “I was thinking more that we could observe clients when they believe themselves unobserved to find out if they’re hiding anything. But seeing who’s at the door, that’s good, too.”

“Also, no going out by yourself anymore.” A man is coming towards them, your average late-evening passer-by in a bulky jacket and sneakers. Todd’s shoulders tense, and he quickens his step to keep himself between Dirk and the man. “Buddy system, right? This job is dangerous.”

“Todd, are you worried about getting mugged?” It’s less of a hunch, this, and more of a proper deduction. The way Todd is glaring at the man as he finally walks past, Dirk would be surprised if Mr. Sneakers weren’t for his part worried about being attacked. “Just because I don’t think it’s going to happen twice in three nights.”

“I’m just being careful.”

The rest of the way, Dirk ends up feeling like a federal witness in the care of the world’s shortest bodyguard. Finally, Todd herds him into the restaurant. After a glowering once-over, he seems to deem it safe enough. Dirk steps up to the counter to inspect the menu, hoping that this isn’t going to become their new mode of operation. While Todd’s concern is touching, it’s a bit disquieting, too.

“I’m in the mood for wontons, I think.”

The words are barely out of his mouth when he jumps back with a yelp, startled by a large orange cat that leapt up from behind the counter to sit on the menu. The movement jars his injured side. He clasps his hands over it, doubles up with a gasp.

“Dirk!” Todd’s hands are on his back, and the pain seems to lessen right away. Dirk straightens up to see Todd's wide, concerned eyes.

Todd turns to glare at the restaurant owner. “Control your pets, lady, will you? This is against every health regulation ever.”

“It’s not mine.” She tries to shoo the cat, but only succeeds in earning herself a disdainful glare. “You want wontons. What about you?”

Dirk doesn’t listen to Todd’s reply. He’s watching the cat, captivated by the way the draft from the window is making her long coat move and flutter. The cat seems to notice his attention and returns a level stare, one paw on the section of the menu listing fried rice dishes.

“Fried rice,” Dirk says. He glances over at the lady behind the counter. “I’d like some fried rice, please.”

“No wontons?”

“And—” The cat shifts, her paws moving to the menu section with the main dishes. “Singapore Chicken. Fried rice and Singapore Chicken, please.” He pats his pockets, finds his wallet still absent, and looks at Todd. “Are you carrying any money?”

As they wait for the restaurant owner to prepare their food, the cat remains perched on the menu, watching them with a serene, jade-coloured stare. When Todd picks up the take-out bag, she jumps off the counter to traipse over to the door, tail held high as she leads the way out.

“Can you believe that woman?” Todd seems uninterested in the cat and comes out with his complaint the moment the restaurant door closes behind them. “She’s just letting strays hang out on her restaurant counter! This place is going to get shut down in no time. And we’re probably going to catch food poisoning.”

“I don’t believe she’s a stray.”

The cat is a few steps ahead of them, tail bobbing as she prances along without bothering to check if they’re following. Her silhouette bleeds in and out of the shadows, but she never moves out of sight.

Todd frowns. “There’s no collar or anything. She doesn’t look like she belongs anywhere.”

“Maybe she belongs _every_ where.”

Dirk ignores Todd’s eye roll, and doesn’t pay any heed to his protests when he follows the cat around a corner that leads them off the path back to the apartment.

“The food’s going to get cold.” Todd jogs to catch up, grimacing. “Is this a case thing? Is the cat our new case?”

“I have no idea.” That is, essentially, not a lie. He has no idea how any of this connects, though he’s sure it does. “Why is it always cats, do you think? Though I suppose we’ve also had dogs. And sharks!”

“This isn’t a shark cat, right?” Todd’s step slows.

Dirk pulls up his shoulders and stretches his neck to catch a glimpse of a bushy tail disappearing into a side street. “Let’s go and find out.”

He breaks into a jog, then remembers that his torso still has a hole in it that’s not meant to be there, and slows down with a grimace. It’s enough to bring him ahead of Todd, though, so he turns the corner first. Surprised, he stops in his tracks.

“Will you look at that!”

“Will I look at what?” Todd almost runs into him, and steps around him with a curse. His scowl is replaced by wide eyes when he spots what Dirk is looking at. “Oh.”

They’re in a residential street, apartment houses lining the curb left and right, with a few sparse trees planted every thirty or so feet. The cat is perched on the steps of a nearby house, coat glinting in the soft light of a street lamp. Next to her, there’s an acoustic guitar leaning against the wall by the door.

“Do you think someone just left it there?”

Todd doesn’t answer, just steps past him to pick it up. He inspects it with the frown of a music lover disapproving of ill treatment of musical instruments before he holds up a piece of paper that someone taped to the neck. “They’re giving it away.”

It’s a hand-written note that says FREE TO TAKE in blocky, capital letters. Dirk peers up at the house, takes in the various illuminated windows. “That’s an odd thing to do.”

“Bad memories, maybe.” Todd comes back over, still inspecting the guitar. “Or maybe someone died.”

“Maybe someone— _Todd_.” Dirk throws him a look of reproach. “Be more gloomy, why don’t you?”

Todd shrugs, hesitates, then holds out the instrument. “Do you want it?”

It’s an odd moment that follows. Todd isn’t quite meeting Dirk’s eyes but isn’t straight-up avoiding them, either, which leads to an unsettling sequence of brief eye contact and askance glances. The guitar hovers between them like the proverbial elephant, and Dirk feels his heart beat in his throat.

“You saw it first,” Todd adds eventually.

“I did. Okay.” Dirk takes the guitar. His fingers brush against Todd’s, and his skin prickles. “Thank you.”

Todd pulls his shoulders up, overly casual. His eyes skitter off to the side, and he glances at the cat still sitting on the steps. “Want to find us a drum set, too?” he asks. “Or maybe a keyboard?”

The cat opens her mouth to expose red gums and sharp teeth, and makes a noise somewhere between a yowl and a scoff. She leaps onto the pavement and trots off back the way they came.

Dirk gives Todd a smile. “Best not lose her.”

\------

There’s no danger of that happening, as all she does is lead them back to the apartment. She stops in front of the door and watches them catch up with the reproachful glare of a locked-out pet.

“Are you even allowed to keep cats?”

Dirk waves Todd off. How is he supposed to know; it’s not like he read the rental contract. He peers up at the tall, semi-modern apartment-slash-office block with its large patches of window fronts, and looks down the street at the truly staggering number of identical-looking buildings. “I wonder how she knew this was us?”

“Maybe she can read.”

It’s true, there is the agency sign next to the door bells. In one of those coincidences that really aren’t coincidences, Dirk’s new apartment was included in the office lease at a conveniently low rate, as it shares a bathroom with the agency. Dirk purses his lips and squints down at the cat. “She does seem quite intelligent for a—”

A scream interrupts him, followed by a rustle of plastic and the jangle of keys. Todd has dropped everything he was holding and is doubling up over his hands.

“Oh, God.”

It’s been happening with disturbing regularity, but Dirk still doesn’t know how to deal with Todd’s pararibulitis attacks. The screaming and the writhing tightens his chest and stifles his breath, and even though helping is stupefyingly easy—all Todd needs is his pills—Dirk never seems to manage it until the polite moment to offer help is long past.

“Ah.” He puts down the guitar, wincing at the wooden clatter as well as the stab in his side as he moves too quickly. “Where’s—do you—can I—”

“Upstairs!” Todd pushes the word out through clenched teeth.

Dirk’s guts clench. He has no idea what Todd is talking about. “You want me to go upstairs? I can—I mean—”

“Pills!” There are tears of pain in Todd’s voice now, and also in his eyes, and God, Dirk would give anything to be able to stop these attacks from happening. “They’re upstairs, can you unlock—ah, _fuck_!”

“Right!” He grabs the keys from the pavement, ignores the pain flaring up in his side, and almost fumbles them before he manages to unlock the door. “Here, upstairs, you can—”

Todd doesn’t wait, immediately pushes past him. He’s not taken the keys, though, and he’s going to need them to get into the apartment, so after a terrifying moment of paralysis, Dirk climbs the stairs after him.

Another reason for why this apartment is being rented out at such a cheap rate may be that it’s more of a hassle to take the lift, which is situated at the other end of the building, than it is to climb the stairs to the fourth floor that the apartment is on. Normally, Dirk doesn’t mind, but by the time he reaches the second floor landing, he’s pretty sure the doctors who released him earlier today would be quite cross if they knew what he was doing.

When he finally catches up, he’s out of breath and in quite a lot of pain himself. Todd is worse, though. He’s cowering next to the door, shoulders hunched over his hands and his breath coming in short, unsteady gasps. The sight makes the corners of Dirk’s eyes get all burn-y.

“Here,” he says after he’s unlocked the apartment, “here, it’s open now. Where—”

“Couch table.”

Todd is quite right, the little prescription bottle is sitting right there on the couch table. Dirk fumbles it open and hands Todd one of the pills. Todd dry-swallows it without hesitation.

As always, it takes him a few moments to go back to normal.

“Better?” Dirk asks, timidly, when most of the pain lines have disappeared from Todd’s face and his mouth has slackened into an exhausted curve.

“Yeah.” Todd nods. “Sorry. _Stupid_. Stupid of me to leave—shit.”

His eyes have caught on something near Dirk’s stomach. Dirk follows his gaze to see a reddish stain spreading on his shirt. “Shit.”

“You must’ve torn your stitches. Jesus, Dirk, sit down.”

Dirk does, the sight of the blood making it easier by turning his knees a bit wobbly. He wets his lips. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware I was— _ow_!”

Todd’s bent over him, one hand braced against the back of the sofa, the other pressed firmly against Dirk’s side. His lips tighten. “Sorry. You have to put pressure on it, though. You can do it yourself—”

And he should do it himself. He knows that after an attack, Todd’s hands tend to be quite tender for a while. He nudges Todd’s fingers aside and cups his own palm over the stain.

“Crap.” Todd straightens up, wipes his fingers on his jeans. His voice sounds shaky, but that may be a residual effect of the attack. “I don’t even have a car to drive you to the hospital.”

“I’m not going back to A&E.” The words are out of his mouth before he even knows he’s going to say them. They sound quite testy. It matches the way he feels about the idea. “Todd, please, just—it’s not that bad.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re bleeding all over the place!”

“I’m—” He winces, lifts his hand a little to inspect the damage. “I don’t think it’s even bleeding very much anymore.”

Todd makes a sound between a desperate whine and a growl. “Take your shirt off.”

It’s easier said than done. Dirk likes layers, especially in the Seattle winter, but that means that taking off his shirt involves peeling out of a close-fitting leather jacket, the shirt itself and his tie, and last but not least an undershirt, which lacks a button row and which he finds is impossible to take off without the pain making his eyes sting.

Todd comes to his help. “Hold still.” He takes the hem of the shirt and gently tugs it over Dirk’s head. They both inspect the gauze taped over Dirk's side. It’s come loose in one corner, the tape too soaked to stick properly anymore.

“They gave me some bandages on discharge.” Dirk pokes at the red mess he made of the nurse’s wound care work. “There are some butterfly ones, perhaps if we just—”

“Let me—” Todd shoos his hands away, lip pinched between his teeth in focus, and starts to peel the ruined bandage off. Dirk winces, leans back against the couch and concentrates on breathing. Todd’s fingers against his exposed side are a prickling, almost ticklish sensation of warmth.

Once the bandage is off, Todd inspects the wound. “I don’t think it’s too bad.” His voice sounds steadier now.

Dirk exhales a relieved breath. “I said so, didn’t I?”

Todd gives him a glare, but it’s not as sharp as it could’ve been. “I’ll see what I can do. But if it bleeds through again, we’re going back to the hospital. Deal?”

“Okay, yes.” Todd’s scrutiny is making Dirk’s spine tingle. “Deal.”

He collects himself while Todd is in the bathroom to fetch the bandages—or he tries. His efforts are ruined when Todd crouches next to him and starts cleaning the wound.

He’s being careful, almost tender, deft fingers barely ever applying pressure. There’s a small twinge now and again, but Dirk finds it’s not necessarily an unpleasant sensation.

Not an unpleasant sensation at all. Oh dear.

He tips his head back against the sofa, stares at the ceiling and tries to think of something that will distract him from Todd's breathing, which seems very loud and close. “What do you think the cat is about?”

Cases are usually a pretty reliable turn-off.

“I—uhm.” Todd sounds a bit distracted himself. “I have no idea.” A cool, wet sensation against Dirk’s skin makes his breath catch; Todd’s applying iodine. “Isn’t that your department?”

“I didn’t see her when I got mugged.” That’s the only possible connection he can think of, the cat having been present three nights ago. “But then, she could have been there. It was dark, she wouldn’t have been easy to spot. And I was somewhat distracted, what with all the stabbing going on.”

There's a pause from Todd. “You haven’t actually told me how it happened. Did they just attack you in the street?”

“Yes.” It comes out too quickly, and a cadence higher than his normal voice. “I mean, sort of.”

Todd’s hands disappear. When Dirk glances over, Todd’s looking at him with Annoyed Expression #4, the one he uses when he suspects Dirk of irresponsible behaviour. “Sort of like how exactly?”

“I may have had a hunch.”

Todd presses his lips together, grabs a butterfly bandage, and Dirk quickly leans back to stare at the ceiling again. “I was out because I felt like I should be, and there was a house, so I went inside.”

“What sort of house?”

“You know, a house. It was a bit, um. ‘Derelict’ is the word, I suppose.”

“For fuck’s sake, Dirk.”

Despite the tension in his voice, Todd’s hands on his side stay gentle. Dirk wets his lips, tries to ignore the guilt that makes his insides twists. It’s not like he meant to get hurt, he just didn’t think that he might. Against previous experience. “I should have probably taken Farah along.”

“Probably, yeah.” Todd uses his teeth to tear some tape off the roll, applies it to Dirk’s side with a long, soft stroke of his thumb. His hand stays resting against Dirk's side for a moment after he’s done. “You’re all good to go.”

“Thank you.” Dirk sits up, inspects the neat, clean bandage. “You’re really good at this.”

“Oh, you know.” Todd scoops the medical supplies back into the bag they came in and gives Dirk a lop-sided smile. “Being on the road with a bunch of hard-drinking wannabe tough guys, you pick up some basic wound care pretty quick.”

Dirk returns the smile, reminded of all the life that Todd has lived without Dirk around. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that some people’s lives didn’t start in their mid-twenties when they finally got out of the CIA lab they were being held in since puberty.

Todd disappears into the bathroom, and Dirk starts the difficult process of getting dressed. He’s only just decided that he’s going to skip the undershirt—it’s blood-stained, painful to put on, and he doubts they’ll be going out again tonight—when Todd returns with Dirk’s Mexican Funeral t-shirt in hand. “Don’t put those back on,” he says with a frown. “You are allowed to be comfortable in your own home. Is this really the only t-shirt you own?”

“Ah.” He takes it from Todd’s outstretched hand. “Possibly, yes.”

“Well, don’t bleed on it.”

The t-shirt really isn’t any easier to pull over his head than the undershirt, but once it’s on, Todd’s right when he says it’s more comfortable than the button-downs. While Dirk’s getting dressed, Todd fetches the prescription pain killers they picked up earlier and leaves them on the couch table.

“I’m going to head downstairs, see if our food’s still there.”

“Oh, right.” Dirk had forgotten about that. “Yes, that’s probably a good idea. And the guitar.”

“And the guitar,” Todd agrees. “Is that a case thing?”

Dirk gives him an apologetic smile. Todd sighs. “Fair enough. Be right back.”

Dirk doesn’t have Todd’s dry-pill-swallowing skills, so he takes the pain killers over to the kitchenette for a glass of water. When he returns, the cat is perched on the armrest of the couch.

“Oh, hello.” He sits down slowly so as not to startle her. “How did you get in here?”

The cat’s gaze goes from neutral to disdainful. Dirk supposes it was a bit of a stupid question. She must’ve come in when Todd opened the door to go downstairs.

“Is there something I’m meant to do? Between you and me, I’m not sure I’m very good at the whole detecting part of being a detective. Anything you can do to give me a hint …?”

The cat’s expression doesn’t change. Dirk leans back against the couch, defeated. “None of this has gone according to plan so far,” he tells her. “Not that I had a plan, but if I’d had one, it wouldn’t have been this.” He pauses. “I think I’m off the clock for tonight. You’re welcome to stay, though.”

As if on cue, the cat jumps off the couch. She crosses the floor towards the bedroom, looking like she owns the place more than Dirk ever feels he does.

He rubs a tired sting from his eyes and tries not to feel rejected by a cat.

Todd returns before long. Their food was still there, although it’s gone completely cold by now. Dirk’s more pleased to see the guitar, actually, which also survived the period of abandonment on the sidewalk. He leaves it to Todd to figure out the microwave (it came with the apartment and has a great many more buttons than Dirk knows what to do with) and picks up the instrument.

“You’ll have to tune it,” Todd calls from the kitchen when Dirk experimentally starts plucking the strings. “It’s been sitting in the cold, it’ll have gone off.”

“How do I do that?”

Todd leans against the kitchen counter, the microwave humming behind him. “Fifth fret,” he says and points. “Put your finger next to the fifth fret on the top string. Hold it down tight and turn the second string’s peg till both strings are in tune. Once they are, just keep going till you’ve done all strings.”

It takes a bit of figuring out, and some gesticulating from Todd when Dirk deems two strings in tune that, according to Todd, aren’t at all. Eventually, though, strumming a hand down the strings produces a pleasant cadence.

Todd comes over, a plate in each hand. “Good enough. If you’re playing with others, you want to tune it to concert pitch, but for playing on your own, this is fine.”

“I have no idea what that means.” It doesn’t bother him. Todd is a fascinating source of information about many things Dirk hasn’t the faintest clue about. He smiles, suddenly shy. “Would you, um. You could show me some more chords.”

Todd did, a few weeks ago. Two simple chords, enough to play a song that Todd said was a good one to start out with when you were trying to learn. Then The Incident happened, and the guitar lessons stopped.

The way Todd’s shoulders tense, Dirk has a feeling they won’t be starting up again any time soon.

“Maybe later,” he says as he takes a seat next to Dirk, wavering a bit as if uncertain about how much of a gap to leave between them. He ends up too far away for their knees to touch, and Dirk tries not to feel disappointed. “Let’s eat, yeah?”

“Okay.” Dirk puts the guitar down and looks at the Singapore Chicken. His spirits fall even further. “Maybe later.”

They eat their dinner (more poke at and then abandon it, in Dirk’s case) and, after making sure Dirk’s wound hasn’t continued bleeding, head to bed. When Dirk crawls under the blankets, the cat gets up from her perch at the foot of the bed and nudges his wrist until he lets her snuggle under the cover as well.

He falls asleep on his good side with a warm ball of purring cat curled up against his stomach and Todd snoring lightly in the next room.


	3. Chapter 3

The cat’s gone the next morning. When Dirk pads out of his bedroom to investigate caffeine options, he finds that Todd isn’t there, either. Nor is the rest of the Singapore Chicken that he left out last night, all that remains on the plate a few grains of rice and some congealed veggies. Trying not to feel a sting of abandonment, he opts for tea and leaves the kettle to do its thing while he sets out to find his phone.

He doesn’t find it, of course, considering he hasn’t gotten a new one yet since the mugging. He does find a note, though, scribbled in Todd’s scrawl and sitting on the couch table under the bottle with the pain killers.

> _Forgot to tell you, I have an appt. this morning. Don’t go into any derelict houses or run up any stairs. I’ll be home around noon.  
>  \-- T_

It cheers him up, even though he’s more than curious what sort of appointment Todd has scheduled. Todd’s not normally an appointments sort of person.

The kettle dings. He takes his mug across the hallway to see if Farah is in yet.

The offices are still somewhat in of a state of just-moved-in. Dirk had a very specific vision of the agency sign, but beyond that, he had few ideas about what the agency’s interior should look like. When he put the discussion to the group, Todd piped up with a Philip Marlowe type of thing, while Farah seemed to be envisioning more something along the lines of Churchill’s war rooms.

What they’ve got now is much more budget-friendly, though Todd did buy himself a leather armchair. It’s still standing by the door where the delivery men put it down a few days ago. As Dirk wanders past it, he wonders with a twist in his stomach if the reason Todd’s left it sitting there for so long is a subliminal unwillingness to fully take part in the agency. He hasn’t said anything, but then, he and Dirk haven’t been speaking as much as they used to. If Todd is feeling renewed reluctance about their friendship, perhaps he’s feeling renewed reluctance about his role of assistant, too.

Dirk shakes his head to chase away these dark thoughts. It’s true that things have been a bit weird ever since, well. Ever since The Incident. But so far, Todd hasn’t punched him for considering himself Todd’s friend yet, so there’s no reason to suspect a lapse of commitment of such magnitude.

Probably.

Farah’s in the bullet-proof reception cubicle, trying to mount a wall shelf while balanced precariously on a stepladder. He’s about to call out, but stops himself, not wanting to cause any undue falling-off-stepladders by startling her. Instead, he heads over to the whiteboard, which was one of the first things they put up, and prints a bold headline in red marker:

THE CASE OF THE TRAVELING MERCHANDISE

“Dirk!”

“Farah!” He waves to her. “We’ve got a new case.”

She comes over, puts her hands on her hips. “Smugglers?” she suggests.

“Perhaps. I don’t have all that many clues yet.” Dirk uncaps the marker again and adds a sub-headline: _Persons of Interest_. Underneath he adds all the names of the people that seem involved so far.

“Oswald, Chester, Mr. Boyd, Cat, Muggers,” Farah reads out. “Why do the muggers have a question mark?”

“I’m not sure they’re involved.” Dirk adds another headline ( _Places of Interest_ ) and lists all locations he’s been to in the course of this case so far. “They might have just been normal muggers.”

“Oh, that reminds me. I traced your phone.” She heads back over to the reception cubicle and returns with her laptop in hand. “You really shouldn’t keep your GPS turned on, Dirk. It’s such a security hazard.”

“But this way you can find it when it’s stolen.” He peers over Farah’s shoulder at the screen, grabs his mug from where he put it down earlier. “Where is that?”

“Mount Rainier National Park.” Farah zooms out the map they’re looking at. Tacoma comes into view, then Seattle. “This is your phone’s last known location before it disappeared day before yesterday. I assume the charge ran out.”

“Why would they take my phone to Mount Rainier?” That makes no sense at all.

“Beats me. But you should add it to the locations list.” Farah flips the laptop shut, inspects the board, then points. “You told me about Oswald, Chester, and Boyd when I came to see you at the hospital. You didn’t mention anyone named Cat, though.”

“Oh, it’s not a name.” Dirk finishes adding the national park and steps back, trying to decide what else should go on the board. “It’s an actual cat. Todd and I met her last night.”

“You _met_ her.”

“We did. She ended up staying over, but she was gone when I woke up.”

Farah does that thing with her eyebrows that she does when she’s trying to make sense of something that seems nonsensical to her. She’s different than Todd in that respect. It’s like she understands that Dirk, as a rule, isn’t being intentionally vague. “Was there something special about this cat?” she asks eventually.

“There was, and I’m trying to put it on the board, but I’m not sure how to fit it into the, um. The scheme.”

On the other hand, Farah is very similar to Todd insofar as she’s got a range of annoyed expressions that she brings out whenever Dirk gets his priorities wrong. “Never mind the board, Dirk. Just tell me.”

“Well,” he starts, and tries to ignore the nervous flutter in his chest that happens when he’s formulating an idea based entirely on hunches. “I’m fairly certain she asked me to order her some Singapore Chicken with fried rice at the Chinese take-out place we went to yesterday. I don’t even _like_ Singapore Chicken.”

“She _asked_ you?”

“Well, no, not in the traditional sense. Nonetheless, she was very convincing. And I’m pretty sure she finished it overnight. Which, honestly, that’s an improbable amount of food for such a small animal.”

His explanation does little to alleviate Farah’s annoyance—which, from experience, is really not surprising. “Just once, Dirk. Just _once_ I want a case without any weird stuff.” She holds up a hand to ward off any apologies. “Where is this magic food-ordering cat now?”

“I have no idea. She might still be in my apartment. I didn’t look _everywhere_ before I left.”

“All right. How about you go and check? And you could put on some clothes while you’re there.” She looks him up and down, and he becomes acutely aware that he’s still wearing his pyjamas. He didn’t even think about changing before he came over.

He should probably not do this once they start bringing clients in.

He heads into the bathroom that the agency shares with his apartment. The set-up is really not as bad as it sounds. If nothing else, he can use it to hide the occasional late arrival to work. He locks both doors and checks the mirror to judge the state of dishevelment that he presented Farah with. It could have been worse: there are no pillow imprints on his face, and his hair looks mostly acceptable—except in the back, where it’s standing up in ways that give him a startled demeanour.

He cards his fingers through, tries to get it to lie flat, and cards more vigorously when it refuses. Eventually, he gives up and consoles himself with the thought that he’ll fix it after his shower.

Something is weird, though, and the hair isn’t it.

He can feel it as a tingle at the top of his head, synapses in his parietal lobe firing. He’s been hooked up to EEGs enough to know that his readings right now would make any neurologist doubt most basic assumptions in their field. He closes his eyes, relaxes his shoulders, and tries to think of nothing at all.

Eventually, the feeling manifests into something more concrete. It’s not what he expected.

He pulls his shirt up, looks at the clean bandage over his side. There’s no blemish on it, not a single drop of blood that’s seeped through since last night. He puts his palm over it, gently at first, then a bit firmer.

It doesn’t hurt at all.

“What the—”

Hoping he won’t have to ask Todd for another round of dressing changes, Dirk starts plucking at the tape. He peels it off carefully and exposes smooth, unblemished skin. There’s not even a bruise. No sign that last night, there had still been a considerably deep cut right here, stitched up and turning the skin around it green and purple.

“Well.” Dirk presses a finger into his magically healed side, expects a painful stab and receives only a light poke. “That’s unexpected.”

He’s alone in the bathroom, so there’s nobody to immediately share this discovery with. He goes through his morning routine, ends up spending some extra time in the shower conducting further tests to see if he’s really been completely healed. After he administers a punch to his side that’s harder than he meant it to be and that almost makes him lose his footing, he decides he’d better leave further investigating for later.

There are times when he misses the Blackwing resources. Nothing in the world would make him go back voluntarily, but at times like these, he wishes he could access their lab equipment. Blackwing aren’t the only ones who’d like to know how his powers work exactly. It’d be nice to know if this is him spontaneously developing speed healing, or if something else is going on.

The next surprise waits for him when he opens his wardrobe to find the cat curled up in a nest she’s built from a few shirts and one of his jackets.

“You—” Dirk frowns, pulls his bathrobe more tightly around his shoulders. “Good morning. I’d rather you didn’t sleep on my clothes, if you don’t mind.”

The cat doesn’t take any notice beyond flicking one of her ears, and snuggles deeper into her nest.

“I ironed those. You’re crinkling them.”

No reaction. Dirk sighs. “Very well. You can have those. Please don’t take any more, though, all right?”

This time when he returns to the offices, he’s presentable, and in decent spirits due to the fact that every movement isn’t accompanied by a twinge in his side anymore. He offers to help Farah with the wall shelf, and alleviates her concerns about him exacerbating his injury by telling her about his spontaneous recovery.

She’s pleased, but suspicious about the unexplained nature of said recovery. Dirk can’t exactly blame her.

“Maybe the muggers _are_ involved,” he muses as he stares at the names on the whiteboard. “Perhaps the knife they were using was—weird. Somehow.”

“Was it?” Farah’s standing next to him, arms crossed and looking like she’s trying to intimidate the whiteboard into giving up answers. “Did you get a good look?”

“No.” Dirk shakes his head. “The fact that I was getting stabbed took up all my attention. They could’ve been stabbing me with a ceremonial dagger, for all I know.”

The effort it takes Farah to keep from reprimanding him is obvious. “We should work on some basic combat observation techniques,” she says instead. “You and Todd both. You’re not civilians anymore.”

“Right, yes.” Farah’s great, but her focus is intimidating. Dirk throws one last look at the whiteboard, but it’s not helping him reach any further conclusions. “Wall shelf, then?”

\------

Todd shows up when they’re on their third attempt to align the wall fixings at the correct distance from one another to be able to stick the actual shelf on. Dirk has never in his life been happier to see anyone.

“Todd! You’re back.”

“Yeah.” Todd gives him a bit of a smile as he shrugs out of his jacket. “Did you think I wouldn’t be?”

It’s a rhetorical question, casual as can be, but it gives Dirk pause. Todd isn’t the first assistant he’s tried to befriend; he isn’t the first assistant to show reluctance at Dirk’s offers of friendship. It’s not the first time he and Todd have had some tension hanging between them, and it’s not the first time Todd’s gone away.

He’s always come back, though. Reliably like clockwork, and unlike anybody else, Todd’s always returned to Dirk’s side. This morning, when Dirk discovered that Todd was gone, he fell victim to well-accustomed worries that Todd might not be coming back. Now, he’s realizing that he didn’t truly believe that. In a brand-new, completely unfamiliar experience, Dirk’s finding that he trusts that Todd will stay.

It’s disorienting. It’s like being flung off a roller coaster and, instead of crashing to the ground, discovering that you can fly. It makes his stomach hitch, and he briefly shakes his head.

“How—” His voice catches. “How was your appointment?”

Todd is watching him with a suspicious glint in his eyes. Dirk deflects with a smile, and Todd seems to decide not to pursue it. “It was good, actually. Hey, Farah.”

Farah throws a distracted glance over her shoulder. “Hey. Say, Todd, you don’t happen to have something to—do? For Dirk, I mean.”

“For me? But I’m helping you!” Farah’s smile wavers, and Dirk’s stomach sinks. “Have I not been helping?”

“You have, I just—I think putting up the shelves is kind of a one-man-job. One-woman-job.”

“Right.” Dirk wets his lips, looks at the wall which at this point seems to consist of more drill holes than brick. That’s not his fault, is it? Putting up shelves is much harder than he thought it would be. “Um, I was actually thinking, Todd—” He turns around, tries to cover his embarrassment with some extra cheer. “We should go out and investigate the house.”

“The house?”

“Where I got mugged!”

“Right.” Todd looks from him to Farah and back. “Wasn’t that something we agreed nobody should be doing without the person who actually, like, has guns? And knows how to use them?”

That’s true. But— “Farah’s busy.”

He avoids Farah’s eyes as he says it, keeps smiling at Todd and hopes against better knowledge that neither of them will press the issue.

They both stay pointedly silent, and Dirk’s shoulders drop. “I think—I _feel_ —it’s got to be you and me, Todd.”

Farah climbs off the step ladder and comes over. She looks like she’s waiting for Dirk to offer a good reason she shouldn’t take him into a chokehold.

Dirk gives her an apologetic look. “Trust me, I’d much rather have you along, you and several of your guns. But—I don’t think we’ll find what we’re looking for if you come along.”

“What are we looking for?”

He glances back over at Todd. “You know I don’t know that.”

“Your powers really are the most useless superpowers ever, Dirk.”

“Yes, well.” He digs his hands into his pockets. “At least they’re superpowers?”

“I don’t feel good about this,” says Farah, and Todd widens his eyes in agreement.

“I mean, you’re still hurt, Dirk. You bled all over your couch last night, and now you want to go back without protection?”

“Ah.” Right, Todd doesn’t know about this yet. Dirk tugs his shirt tails out and pushes his undershirt up. “Look at this.”

“What are you—” Momentarily alarmed by Dirk taking his clothes off, Todd’s eyes narrow in curiosity when he realizes what he’s looking at. “What the hell?”

“I noticed this morning. It’s really quite astonishing.” Dirk pokes a finger into where last night there’d been a cut worthy of several stitches and heavy prescription pain killers.

“There isn’t even a scar!” Todd raises a hand and runs his fingers over the unblemished skin. Dirk realizes too late what he’s about to do to, so there’s no time to dodge. The sensation of Todd’s fingers softly brushing over his side prickles, tickles, and stimulates him into jumping back.

Todd snatches his hand back. “Jesus.”

“Sorry.” Dirk laughs, pats his shirt back down and tucks it in. “Ticklish, or something.”

He looks up to find Farah staring at them with an expression somewhere between horror and amusement. He decides it’s probably best to never talk about this again.

“Perhaps we could take one of your guns? I’m hoping we won’t have to use it, mostly because I have no idea how they work. But just having it can be a useful mugger deterrent.”

“It can also escalate a situation to the point of someone getting hurt who otherwise wouldn’t have,” Farah says with an arched eyebrow. “Hang on.”

She heads into her office. There’s the sound of drawers being opened and closed. A few moments later, she returns with something in hand that Dirk, not knowing any better, would have called a gun.

“This is a Taser.”

Aah. Dirk nods. Next to him, Todd takes a step back. “Don’t point that at me.”

“I’m not going to Taser you, Todd.” Farah seems offended at the idea. “Has either of you ever used one before?”

They haven’t, so Farah gives them a quick run-down before she sends them off with a troubled frown and the advice not to use it unless absolutely necessary. Dirk lets Todd pocket the weapon. He doesn’t trust it not to go off in his pocket, and doesn’t trust himself not to forget that he has it when push comes to shove.

“I’m going to get arrested.” Todd glances over his shoulder, ducks his head in a way that makes him look quite convincingly guilty. “I bet you need a certificate or something to carry that thing.”

“Nobody knows you have it, right?”

Todd throws him a glare. “That is the opposite of how it works.”

They pass a Verizon shop on the way, so Dirk pops in and spends a shocking amount of money on a new phone. It’s only then that he realizes that everything on his old phone—his contacts, his pictures, his message histories—of course wouldn’t be on this new phone.

“Do you not have a cloud back-up?” Todd stares at him, aghast.

Dirk purses his lips, squints, and opts for, “No.”

Turns out a cloud back-up is something that saves all your things for you in a place where muggers can’t just take it off of you after stabbing you through your shirt. Todd sets it up for him, then puts his own number into the device and sends himself a text.

“There. You’re going to have to get Farah’s number, and—Amanda’s. Everyone else you had in your phone.”

Dirk grimaces. “This was tedious the first time I did it, Todd.”

“This is why you keep a back-up.”

He’s put Farah and Amanda in by the time they come up to the bus stop where he caught a bus four nights ago. He pockets his phone, done with restoring contacts for the moment, and bounces on his toes at the curb. 

“What was your appointment this morning?”

“Hm?” Todd looks up.

“You said you had an appointment this morning. What sort of appointment?”

“Oh. Doctor’s appointment.”

Dirk’s guts clench at the words, hard enough to startle him. He’s not sure if these are normal emotions or if they’re universe-induced intuitions. Either way, they’re uncomfortable. “Are you okay?”

Todd smiles. “I’m fine. It wasn’t anything acute.”

“What was it, then?” 

“I found this leaflet at the store a few days ago.” The bus arrives. As it’s the middle of the day, for once they’re not the only people on it. They opt for a seat in the back. “It was the kind of thing you don’t really pay attention to, like, take this pill and every problem in your life will magically disappear.” Todd waves his hands as if he were performing a magic spell. Dirk laughs, though he’s not sure he’s ever seen anything like that.

“Anyway, it said it was good for neurological disorders, so I googled it. Nothing to lose, right? And—it works. Apparently. For some people, anyway. I found this one guy who—” Suddenly, Todd seems uncomfortable. He shifts in his seat, crosses his arms. “He had pararibulitis, too, and he started the treatment, and it went away.”

“Oh.” This should, in all fairness, be great news. Dirk feels a bit guilty that he can’t quite muster the appropriate excitement. “Went away went away? Entirely?”

“Yeah. It’s experimental, so, like, it’s not FDA approved or anything yet. But on the upside they don’t make you pay.” Todd grins, pulls out a bottle of pills and shakes it. “I signed a thing, and they just handed me these. They’re even going to start paying me if I stick with it.”

“They’ll _pay_ you for letting them give you medication? That seems—” Dirk reaches for the prescription bottle, and Todd snatches it out of reach. It seems an unconscious reaction, judging by the guilty frown Todd is wearing when Dirk looks up at him.

“They want test subjects.” Todd pockets the pills. “They’re doing a study, and they’re paying me to volunteer as a test subject. Med companies do it all the time.”

“Do they?” Dirk’s never heard of anything like that, but then, he’s not very up on a lot of things that happen in the world. “That seems unethical at best and incredibly dangerous at worst.”

“That’s why they make you sign a thing. Look, Dirk—” Todd’s frowning at the passing houses. His hands twist in his lap. “Pararibulitis in Wendimoor was one thing, and Amanda—Amanda has her thing with the Rowdy 3. But all I’ve got is shitty hallucinations that make my hands hurt like hell. If there’s a chance I can make it go away, I’m not going to let it pass by.”

“Of course.” Dirk looks down at his own hands. He still can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s the reason Todd has the disease in the first place. Not the immediate, direct cause-and-effect reason, maybe, but reason enough to feel bad about the part he played. He glances over, gives Todd a smile. “I hope it works out.”

“Thanks.” Todd smiles back, just a twitch of his lips. He shifts in his seat, clearly ready to change the subject. “So what exactly are we looking for in that house?”

Sometimes it’s like Todd does it on purpose. “Todd, really, you should know by now that I don’t know—”

“Yes, yes, I know. But you’ve got a hunch, right? What _do_ you know? Or—feel, or whatever you want to call it?”

Dirk frowns, listens to whatever it is that resonates within him and tells him (usually in unnecessarily cryptic and incomplete ways) what he needs to know. “I feel that—we are missing a piece. I’m not sure if we’re missing it in the sense of not seeing it, or missing it in the sense of not yet having seen it.”

“And we’ll find it at the house?”

Dirk shrugs. “Maybe.”

Todd exhales, frustrated. “I may be misremembering, but I feel like you didn’t use to be this bad.”

Dirk huffs. “Yes, well, interference doesn’t help.”

“Interference?”

“Yes, Todd. Interference. Things—not happening that are meant to happen. Or that I think are meant to happen.”

“What didn’t happen that was meant to happen?”

Todd’s attentive, all of a sudden, and Dirk wishes he’d never said anything. This conversation is the last conversation he wants to be having right now. Or ever.

As if on cue, the bus pulls up to their stop. He takes a breath, gets up, and turns to catch Todd’s eyes. “Nothing is ever meant to happen, Todd. The universe is not a puzzle. It doesn’t work like that. There are no specific things that do or do not need to happen to make the universe go the way it’s meant to go. The universe isn’t meant to go anywhere, and I don’t know anything. I never know anything. So just—please accept that, okay? And stop asking.”

Judging by Todd’s expression, he didn’t quite expect an outburst. To be honest, neither did Dirk. Everything he said is true, though, and he’s not going to take it back.

Their staring match is interrupted by the bus driver. “You getting off?”

“Yes.” Dirk straightens up. “We absolutely are.”

Todd catches up with him when he’s already a good ten feet away from the bus stop. “Dirk!”

Dirk glances over. “ _What_?”

He immediately regrets his sharp tone. Todd looks confused, a little concerned, but after Dirk’s rebuke, there’s wariness in the mixture, too. Dirk’s own expression softens, and he’s about to apologize when Todd asks, “Dirk, are you okay?”

“What?”

“I just—I don’t know.” Todd shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, narrows his eyes in scrutiny. “You’ve done some really stupid things the past few days. You do a lot of stupid things, but going into a crack house on your own, that’s stupid even for you. You’ve been acting weird. You seem on edge.”

“No, I don’t.” It’s not even an attempt at shutting Todd down. Dirk really can’t detect much of a deviation in the last few days from his normal behaviour. “I’m fine, Todd.”

“All right.” Todd pulls his shoulders up. “But if you weren’t, you’d say, right? Because, like—just because I maybe don’t want to do _everything_ with you doesn’t mean I don’t want to do things with you. Like investigating. I do want to investigate with you.”

Belatedly, perhaps, Dirk catches on to what Todd is getting at. His heart flutters, and he wets his lips, makes sure his voice is pitched at its normal height when he speaks. “I know that. It’s fine, Todd. What happened—happened. There’s no need to discuss it.”

Todd hesitates, and Dirk feels his chest tighten at the idea of Todd insisting they keep talking about this. A moment later, though, to Dirk’s relief, Todd backs down. “All right.” He nods. “If you say so.”

They turn a corner and stand in front of the house that four nights ago called to Dirk strongly enough to make him ignore basic common sense. In the light of day, the tall, square-ish building block doesn’t look particularly impressive. The part of town they’re in is not the nicest, and this house is probably the most run-down of all the ones in this street. Dirt stains the walls almost all the way up to the second-floor windows, and the door hangs off its hinges, revealing a glimpse into a hallway tiled with once-beige, now mossy-green wall tiles.

“Yeah, that looks like a super safe place to go into on your own.”

“Give it a rest, Todd.” Dirk shrugs his jacket into place, steels his shoulders, and steps up to the door to push it open further. “Last time, I was attacked on the third-floor landing. We’ll just be more careful this time. Easy-peasy.”

Todd pulls out the Taser. “Get back. I’m going first.”

Dirk would be lying if he said his heart wasn’t racing as they ascend the stairs. Each landing they reach is deserted. On the third floor, Dirk looks around, tries to listen to the universe telling him where to go next.

“I don’t think anyone’s in here at all,” Todd whispers.

“All the better for us. Let’s try this door.”

It’s the first apartment to the right. The lock is busted, the doorframe splintered and keeping the door slightly ajar. Once again, Todd pushes in front of him, presses his back against the wall and quite convincingly covers the moves of a TV cop nudging open a door while staying out of the line of fire.

Nobody shoots at them. Everything stays quiet.

“Guess bad guys only hang out here after sun-down.” Despite his words, Todd’s still keeping his voice down. “Come on.”

The apartment is cramped and cheaply panelled in fake dark wood. It smells of mould and—oh. “This is something,” Dirk says, momentarily forgetting that there could be people with knives waiting behind every door. He pushes past Todd, sucks in a deep breath and tries to locate the source of the kebab smell.

“Are you a sniffer dog now?”

“In here.” He heads into what probably used to be the sitting room. There’s a battered sofa standing near the back wall, right next to a window door frame-sans-door letting in a cold draft from the balcony. The rest of the room is void of furniture, but cluttered with cardboard boxes containing a wild variety of things—jackets, bags, hats, scarves. Most of them seem to be trademark goods. At a glance, Dirk spots logos such as Michael Kors, Prada, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton.

The source of the kebab smell emanates from a half-empty take-away carton sitting on top of one of the boxes. 

“The van men were here.”

“What van men?” Todd is holding the Taser cocked like a gun, glances around suspiciously.

Dirk rolls his eyes. “Chester and Oswald. The men from the van, I told you about them.”

“Weren’t those the ones that helped you? This place looks like a hang-out spot for criminals, not good Samaritans.”

Dirk goes over to the take-away box, nudges the lid open. “Perhaps they’re both helpful _and_ have criminal leanings. Or perhaps they have split personalities.”

“This is still warm.” Todd’s come over to peer over Dirk’s shoulder. “Whoever left this here hasn’t been gone—”

There’s a creak in the hallway. Steps on the landing.

Dirk’s breath catches. “Shit!”

He’s frozen in place, but Todd isn’t. He’s so much better than Dirk at thinking on his feet. A hand closes around Dirk’s arm, yanks him towards the sofa in the corner. There’s a gap where the sofa and the walls form a triangular shape.

“Get down!”

Todd doesn’t have to say it twice. Dirk ducks behind the couch, grabs Todd’s sleeve and pulls him down just as the door opens to admit two sets of footsteps: one slow and measured, the other of a more frenzied disposition.

“Why do they always have to leave such a mess?”

Dirk knows that voice. It’s a mean lizard sort of voice, the voice of the man called Chester. He taps Todd’s arm, frantic, and widens his eyes. Todd looks first confused, then mad as he presses a finger on his lips.

“They do their job, we do ours.” This, unsurprisingly, is Oswald. “Grab those, I’ll take the rest.”

From the bumping and scraping of carton over wood, they’re collecting the boxes. Dirk presses his back against the wall, peers through the gap left by the sofa corner. Oswald comes into view on his way out the door, in his arms a stack of three boxes with the take-away kebab balanced on top.

They’re leaving! In lieu of saying so to Todd, Dirk tries to nudge Todd with his foot.

Unfortunately, he misjudges, kicks the back of the sofa instead of Todd’s leg, and gives their location away.

“Who’s there?”

“ _Shit_!”

Todd grabs his arm again, shoves him against the back of the sofa and uses their momentum to push it towards Chester. Flailing, Dirk finds his feet and sees himself face-to-face with a narrow-jawed, red-haired man, whose expression is quickly changing from startled to menacing.

“Oswald! Get back in here!”

“Dirk, _go_!”

Dirk finds himself yanked to the side and dragged after Todd through the rotting door frame onto the balcony.

“What? This is a terrible plan!” It’s a balcony, it’s not like they can go anywhere.

“Fire escape!”

“Right!”

Not a second too soon. When Dirk follows Todd and scrambles down the ladder, which is slippery and cold and overall very unpleasant to touch, Chester comes running onto the balcony, Oswald (who is still as gigantic as Dirk remembers him) on his heel.

“Don’t chase us!” He drops onto the metal landing, almost twists his ankle as he barely catches himself before running for the next ladder. “We don’t even want anything from you!”

He’s not sure if they can hear him, but they don’t seem to be following. As he peers up the fire escape, the ladders above remain empty. “Todd, I don’t think—”

“We have to jump.”

Todd’s on the last ladder that leads to the ground, except as with all fire escapes, it stops a good distance above the pavement. Dirk stands on the landing above, squints at the street, which still seems quite a distance away. “I don’t think they’re chasing us anymore, Todd. Maybe best to come back up—”

“There they are!”

The shout rings through the street. Oswald and Chester seem to have opted for the normal stairs. They push through the dilapidated door of the apartment block, come running towards them.

“Oh, for— _jump_!”

He doesn’t have to say it twice. Todd drops to the ground. Dirk would’ve quite liked to see how he fared, but he’s too busy scrambling down the ladder himself. He doesn’t take a moment at the end of it, just lets himself drop down, wrenching his shoulders as he lets go of the last rung a moment too late. The ground is closer than he expected, and he scrapes his knees as he does an involuntary drop-and-roll.

“Ow, for—”

“This way!”

In an undignified flail, he struggles to his feet and starts running before he’s properly regained his balance. Todd leads the way into a side alley, past a few bins and some rubbish, until he comes to a stumbling halt next to the open back of a transport van parked against the wall of the house.

“Get in!”

Dirk’s throat clicks as his insides squirm in a decidedly fate-of-the-universe sort of emotion. “Todd, I don’t think that’s—”

“Get _in_ , Dirk!”

Once again, Dirk is grabbed and shoved, this time into the back of the van. Todd jumps in behind him and pulls the doors shut.

“I don’t think they saw us,” he whispers, gasping for breath.

Dirk rolls onto his stomach, grimacing at a twinge in his shoulder, and squints into the dimness of the van’s load compartment. It’s the sort that’s used by couriers and smaller logistic companies, and it’s filled with cardboard boxes of the kind they saw in the apartment.

“Oh, no.”

“What?” A low hiss, Todd still keeping his voice down.

Dirk waves a hand. “This is their bloody van.”

“This is—” Todd takes in the boxes, lifts one of the lids to reveal the same kind of merchandise they saw in the boxes upstairs. “Oh, mother—”

“Shut up!” Dirk scrambles to clap a hand over Todd’s mouth, a sudden intuition telling him to keep as quiet as possible.

Seconds later, there are voices right outside.

“Did you see where they went?”

“Didn’t see anything.” A loud bang; Chester must’ve punched the side of the van in frustration. “Goddamn nosy parkers. And the one guy, wasn’t that the guy from the other night?”

“He was the guy from the other night.” A pause. “Maybe he came to say thank you.”

“For Christ’s sake, Oswald. He came to do whatever he was here to do the other night.” There’s a scrape against the door, and Dirk flinches back, hand still clasped over Todd’s mouth.

“We’re behind schedule.” Chester again. “Just get the goddamn boxes. Mr. Boyd can send out a strike team. Maybe next time don’t make sure the guy who’s trying to steal our shit gets fixed up so he can do it again a week later.”

“He was hurt, Chester. I don’t like people being hurt.”

“Yeah, that’s why you’re driving deliveries. Get the boxes, all right? I’ll stay here and keep watch in case they come back.”

“All right.”

The voices stop, and after a few long moments, Todd paws at Dirk’s hand over his mouth. Dirk removes it with an apologetic glance.

“What now?” It’s barely even a whisper from Todd.

Dirk pulls his shoulders up and mouths, “We stay here?”

“They’re going to load the boxes in here!” It’s a combination of gestures and expressively enunciated, silent words, but Dirk catches Todd’s drift. He grimaces in frustration, wants to curse and shoves a fist into his mouth to stifle it.

Something in the corner of his eyes catches his attention. He looks over, waves a hand at the stacks of boxes already in the van. “We can hide!”

There’s a rough transport blanket in the back. As quietly as possible, they re-stack a couple of boxes to build a hidey-hole between them and the wall separating the load from the driver compartment. They huddle into it and pull the blanket over their heads.

It’s a close squeeze, so Dirk ends up with an armful of Todd pressed against his chest. He swallows, places his arms carefully to only touch areas that seem safe enough. Todd’s hair smells of cheap shampoo, a whiff of weed, and himself. Dirk reminds himself that it would be weird to stick his nose into it.

The idea that they might be hiding in the van apparently hasn’t even crossed Chester’s and Oswald’s minds. The door opens, lets in cold air and light obscured by the blanket over their heads, and the van bounces as Oswald stacks the boxes at the very end of the load compartment.

The door slams. By the time Dirk and Todd have disentangled themselves from the blanket, the engine’s started.

“We should get out of here.”

In yet another mad scramble, they try to get to the door before the van starts moving properly, but they needn’t have bothered. Turns out that with a kidnapper’s foresight, someone’s disabled the handle that would open the door from the inside.

“Goddammit!”

“Shhh!” Dirk shushes Todd, who, in the darkness of the windowless van, is little more than an even blacker shape in black surroundings. “They’ll hear us.”

“Great! Great, maybe they should!” Despite his words, Todd has lowered his voice to a hissed whisper. “I don’t want to go wherever they’re going. I have no idea where they’re going, but I don’t want to go there.”

“All right, okay, perhaps they’ll stop on the way. Let’s just see, okay?”

The van, which up until now had been moving at the slow, uneven pace of a large vehicle creeping down a narrow alley, takes a turn and speeds up. Todd loses his footing, and it’s all Dirk can do to prevent both of them falling into a stack of boxes. “Careful!”

“Just—sit down.” They untangle their limbs in the darkness and feel their way into a semi-stable sitting position against the side of the van. With a sinking feeling, Dirk listens to the van’s engine growl as Chester picks up speed.

“Let’s just see.” It’s a low mutter. Dirk’s not sure it’s even addressed at him. “All right, let’s fucking see. Maybe we’ll come out in Miami. At least it’s warm there at this time of year, right?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is late! I attended online VidUKon this weekend and had to do a lot of yelling about vids, so there was no time to prep and post. I hope you enjoy!

“Todd?”

The word echoes in the dimly lit load compartment. Hours ago (nay, _millennia_ ago), they found a phone in one of the boxes. That is to say, they found many phones in the boxes, all of them quite nice and recent models, all of them presumably stolen. Ever since it’s at least not been pitch-black anymore.

Todd’s reply sounds positively catatonic. “What?”

“Are we there yet?”

A Fendi scarf sails through the air, lands in Dirk’s face. He flails, brushes it off, then lets his hands fall at his sides. “I’m so _bored_!”

“I’m massively entertained. This is my idea of a good time, Dirk, no lie.”

“Ugh.” Dirk lets himself slide sideways, comes to lie with his back against the wall so he’s on eye level with Todd, who gave up on sitting up straight around the time the van started to take narrow winding roads up a mountain.

“This is kind of like being on the road.” Todd’s eyes have a far-away look, like he’s remembering something.

Dirk frowns. “I think that’s because you’ll find that we are. On the road, that is.”

“No, smart-ass.” The far-away look is replaced by a glare. “I meant with the band. We had a van, of sorts.”

“Of sorts?”

“It was more of a pick-up, really. One of those with a hood over the truck bed. You could fit all of our equipment in there, and if you were tired enough, you could fit yourself in there alongside for a nap.”

That sounds horrible, frankly, but there’s the hint of a smile on Todd’s face that makes Dirk think that there’s a nostalgic aspect to this that he’s missing. “Did you travel far? I thought you were more a, well, local sort of thing.”

“We were.” Todd yawns, stretches as good as he can between the boxes. “We weren’t really any sort of thing. But we did travel, usually to music festivals. Furthest we went was Jackson. In Wyoming.”

Todd talking about the band always feels fragile, somehow. Like he’s allowing a glimpse behind the curtain, perhaps not even intentionally. Dirk never quite knows how nosy he’s allowed to be. “How many of you were there?”

“Four. Well. Five at one point, but then we figured out we didn’t really need a second guitar. Core Mexican Funeral were always just the four of us.”

But then, it’s not like Dirk ever knows when to shut up. “Do you miss them?”

Todd huffs, rolls onto his stomach. “Don’t really get to, right?” Before Dirk can say anything, he waves him off, crosses his arms and rests his head on them. “Never mind. It’s been like over half a decade. So much water under the bridge, it’s a whole different river at this point.”

There are about five things Dirk would like to say, from offering sympathy to pointing out that something being in the past doesn’t mean you don’t get to have feelings about it. But with characteristic skill, Todd’s made sure to silence any comments before Dirk’s even thought of them.

For all the times Todd has called Dirk annoying, he doesn’t realize how annoying he himself can be.

“I’m reminded of Blackwing,” he offers, not without spite. If Todd thinks his past is too sad to discuss, perhaps he’ll change his mind if Dirk shares a bit of his own. “They have a whole fleet of vans, very black ops government type of things. They put me into one when they took me from my parents’ house. Sort of belied the story they’d fed me about taking me to a special treatment centre. Not that I realized it at the time.”

As intended, that’s returned Todd from broody self-pity land. He’s watching Dirk with wide eyes. “How old were you when they took you?”

“Eleven.” Dirk shifts, suddenly not sure anymore this was the best strategy. He has to admit, he isn’t exactly big on talking about his past, either. “I wasn’t an easy child to have around. I would get hunches, but I didn’t know what they meant, and—well. They usually end badly, right? From a personal perspective. That much hasn’t changed, except nowadays nobody can blame my parents for it.”

“Blame your parents?”

Dirk sighs, crosses his arms as he shifts to lie on his back. “In the year before they took me, I’d broken four ribs, sprained my wrist, ruptured my spleen, and fractured my tibia. None of it was my parents’ fault, but the NSPCC didn’t share that opinion.”

“What’s the NSPCC?”

“Child protection services in England.”

“Right.” He can hear the frown in Todd’s voice. “I thought it was the CIA who took you.”

“It was. The NSPCC just made it easier.” Dirk pauses. He wasn’t aware of any of this at the time, and he never got confirmation on what exactly happened, but it’s easy enough to put together. “Presumably, my parents ended up facing a choice between giving me to the NSPCC and a foster system they were familiar with and horrified by, or giving me to the CIA, who were talking quite a good game about how they were going to ‘help me manage’—well, me.”

He doesn’t like the bitterness that’s crept into his voice, likes the way his stomach is clenching to a rock even less. Bringing this up was a terrible idea, but now that he’s talking about it, he doesn’t know how to stop. “I took quite a long time to figure out that helping me was very low on their agenda, way down underneath things like ‘analyse’ and ‘test’ and ‘torture’ and ‘weaponise’.”

“Torture?”

Dirk glances at Todd, whose big blue eyes are shining in the dim light from the phones. Immediately, he regrets even more that he opened his mouth. He appreciates Todd’s protective streak, but he doesn’t want it directed at him for things that nobody can do anything about anymore. “I’m being dramatic, Todd. They never tortured me. They just kept me locked up. On my own. For—quite a long time, actually.”

“How long?”

“Sixteen years.”

“Jesus. So you were—” Todd squints, counts on his fingers. “You were twenty-seven when you got out?”

“That’s when the breach happened. Once I’d come of age, they’d take me out on ops occasionally. So I wasn’t locked up all the time.” Dirk waves a hand, acutely aware that he’s giving Todd the same wave-off he himself got earlier. “It’s really not all that interesting, if you think about—”

“The van’s stopped.”

“What?”

Todd scrambles to his feet. “Hide the phones!”

The van has stopped; Todd is quite correct. It’s sitting quietly, the engines turned off. Dirk grabs the phones he can reach, throws them into a box without bothering to turn their lights off. He hopes the scarf he stuffs on top will hide them sufficiently.

“Come on, quick.” Todd grabs his arm, pulls him to the back of the van, where there’s still the hiding place they built earlier. This time it’s Dirk who ends up pressed against Todd’s chest, Todd’s arms circling around him in what feels more like a headlock than an embrace.

Not a second too soon. The moment they’re hidden away, the back of the van opens.

“… take them upstairs,” comes Chester’s voice, accompanied by the sound of cartons being dragged over the van floor. “I’ll go find Mr. Boyd and meet you in the office. And make sure it all gets where it’s meant to go. The box that went missing last time, I’m sure one of the goddamn security mercs took it en-route.”

“It is in their nature, Chester. They’re just—”

“I don’t care who or what they are. They’re getting paid to do a job, not to slack off and steal shit. Let’s get going, I don’t have all day.”

“Right-y oh,” says Oswald. There’s footsteps crunching on pavement and the sound of boxes being stacked. Then another set of footsteps, these ones slower and heavier than the first, moving away from the van.

Todd taps his arm. “ _Go_!”

Dirk, when he realizes that Todd means for them to leave the van, feels his stomach drop and his heartrate pick up. Carefully, he sticks his head out to check if Oswald really is gone.

The van door stands ajar, presents a view of a deserted patch of pavement. A little further back, a low wall lines what seems to be a stretch of scraggly bushes, leafless at this time of the year.

“I think it’s safe to go,” Dirk whispers to Todd, who is squirming against him.

“Then go already!”

Dirk extricates himself from the cramped hiding place and ducks out of the van, using the cover of the doors for as long as he can. He was hoping to spot some more cover once out in the open, but this place, whatever it is, sorely lacks any useful spots to hide.

“The hell are we?”

Todd is right behind him, and he doesn’t sound thrilled with their new location.

“I have no idea,” Dirk says, keeping close to the side of the van. “Is it me, or is it colder than when we got in?”

“It’s freezing,” Todd says with a slight chatter of teeth. “Maybe we should go back and get a couple of those scarves and jackets.”

Dirk reaches the front of the van and peers over the hood. To his dismay, he spots Oswald, who’s returning at a brisk pace across the large patch of asphalt that the van’s parked at the edge of. “Maybe not!” He grabs Todd’s sleeve and pulls him around the corner of a building.

Back pressed against cold concrete and eyes squeezed shut, they barely breathe while Oswald collects a second stack of boxes. When he’s left again, Dirk slowly exhales. He tilts his head back, squints up the wall that he’s leaning against.

“That is a big bloody building.” He takes a step away from it and turns around. It’s really more of a factory, smooth walls without windows and a perfectly rectangular shape. There are a couple of doors along the side, metal-grid stairs leading up to where they sit above the foundation of solid concrete. The rest of the building is covered in smooth, white metal tiling, with a blue-and-red commercial logo in the top corner.

“It’s built right into the mountains.”

Dirk turns around to see what Todd is staring at. He’s elected to look in the other direction, away from the building and up, where a cloud-covered mountain range looms above them like, well. Like really tall mountains. Dirk lets his eyes follow the outline of the peaks, right up to where they disappear behind the monolithic factory.

“Not a small scale sort of place, this.”

“Who would build a giant facility like this right into the mountains?”

Dirk shrugs. “Mr. Boyd, I suppose?”

“It’s terrible for logistics.”

Todd sounds offended on a personal level. Dirk can’t help but snort. “Such a critic.” He glances around the corner to see if Oswald’s on his way back already. But the large space behind the factory hall, which Dirk now realizes must be the loading bay, is empty.

“We should get out of here,” says Dirk.

“We should investigate,” says Todd at the same time.

Dirk blinks in bewilderment. Todd frowns. “We’re _here_. This is clearly the place where the bad guys get their orders, or at least drop off their stolen goods. We should take a look around, right?”

“Yes,” Dirk says slowly. Todd’s words make a lot of sense, and yet— “But perhaps we shouldn’t? It might be dangerous.”

Todd’s eyes widen with impatience. “Well, it’ll definitely be warmer inside. I don’t know about you, but I’m not dressed for November in the mountains.”

Neither is Dirk, to be fair. The jacket he’s wearing (burgundy leather with a pinkish hue and a really cool quilting pattern down the front) is faux-fur-lined and warm enough for the occasional winter-y stroll through Seattle, but up here, he might as well not be wearing it. He squints down the length of the building at the door nearest to them. “Perhaps it’s open.”

“Let’s find out.”

Todd leads the way, Dirk on his heels keeping a close eye on their surroundings. Luckily, this side of the building seems deserted. Come to mention, the entire place doesn’t seem particularly busy.

Dirk’s still climbing the stairs when Todd is already rattling the door knob. “It’s locked.”

“Let me try.”

He’s not like some other Blackwing subjects in that respect. Locks don’t usually just open for him—except now and again, they do. The door knob doesn’t turn when he tries a clockwise approach, but in the other direction, it opens easily enough.

“How’d you do that?”

Dirk feels a clench of smugness in his chest. “Superpowers.”

Only when they step inside does Dirk realize that they’re probably going to be on a raised platform, and therefore awfully exposed, the same way they were outside. In another stroke of luck, the metal stairs leading down to the floor of the building open into a deserted corridor. He breathes a sigh of relief as he follows Todd down.

These walls were clearly erected to be easily torn down again, compartmentalizing a large factory floor into smaller segments. White plaster offsets against shiny silver door knobs in the light of the fluorescent bars suspended from the high ceiling. Next to each door, there’s a sign holder providing a convenient way to label the room. Dirk spots a few names, and signs like “Building Security” and “Maintenance”.

This seems to be the custodial section, then.

“I hear something.” Todd says it in a whisper, points down the corridor where another one branches off to the right. Dirk nods. He can hear them, too: people talking up ahead.

“Can you understand what they’re saying?”

Todd shakes his head. “Too echo-y.”

They creep further along, one eye on the doors surrounding them. Dirk notices a number of rooms with empty sign holders, which makes him hope that it’s perhaps not just the outside of the facility that’s sparsely staffed.

When they reach the corner, Todd peers around it only to pull back immediately. “There’s a bunch of scientists down there,” he hisses.

Scientists? Dirk frowns, confused, and nudges Todd aside to take a look for himself.

This hallway is different than the one they came down. On the right hand side, there are more doors, but on the left, the hallway widens out into what seems to be an office space of some sort. L-shaped desks sit in a row along the wall, each equipped with a computer, some science-y gadgets (Dirk spots a Bunsen burner on each table, as well as something that looks like a centrifuge), and a mini-fridge. At every work station there’s a person clad in a lab coat, hair covered with a shower cap. Well, it’s probably more of a lab cap.

In the back, two broad-shouldered security guards in black gear with bulging utility belts are talking to one of the lab people. These must be the mercenaries Chester was talking about. The scientist is waving his hands, seemingly exasperated, but their conversation is impossible to hear over the backdrop of gadgets whizzing and beeping.

Dirk pulls back, presses his back against the wall. “What the hell is this place?”

“I have no idea. Lab of some sort?”

Dirk widens his eyes; he’d figured that much out himself. He points down the corridor that’s not the one with the scientists in it. “We should go this way.”

It means they’ll have to sneak past the other corridor in plain sight of everyone in it, but there’s really no way around it except going back outside. Dirk steels his shoulders, glances in direction of the lab, then waves to Todd to follow him as he tries to scurry as quietly as possible to the safety of the opposite wall.

They’re about halfway when a shout rings out. “Stop right there!”

“Shit!”

Dirk grabs behind him for a handful of Todd’s sleeve and breaks into a run. They tear past more of those bland white doors, heavy footfalls following them. “I said stop!”

Another corridor branches off. Dirk slows a little to turn the corner. Todd passes him, and as he does, Dirk spots the Taser in his hand. He’s still got it, then. That, at least, is reassuring.

“Did we lose him?” A glance over his shoulder reveals an empty hallway.

Todd doesn’t get a chance to answer. The words are barely out of Dirk’s mouth when he spots their pursuer taking cover behind the corridor wall. A split-second later, a shot rings out.

Dirk yelps, ducks his head mid-run, and trips over his own feet.

“Dirk!”

He goes down, bruises his hipbone on the concrete floor, and slams back-first into the wall. He doesn’t get a moment to collect himself; Todd’s right there to grab his hand and yank him back up.

“Through here!”

They’ve reached the end of the hallway, which is a set of double doors on swinging hinges. Using both of their momentum, Todd shoves Dirk through. With flailing arms, Dirk stumbles into a deafening sea of noise.

It’s the factory floor proper. A large hall spreads out before Dirk, filled with work stations, boxes, crates, vehicles, and people. Most of them are dressed in lab coats, but there are also a number of black-clad security guards with guns and batons on their belts.

The ones in close vicinity snap their heads around when he bursts in, and immediately reach for one or the other.

“Not through here!” Dirk takes a step back and bumps into Todd. His heart’s in his throat, eyes focused on the menacing muzzle of one of the guns. “Bad idea!”

“This way!” Once again, Todd pulls him along. They’re going sideways now, away from the bulk of security staff. Shouts of “Stop!” and “Halt!” ring out, but Todd clearly has a goal. It becomes apparent only when Todd skids to a halt right next to it.

“Up!”

Dirk’s insides twist. “Todd, I don’t know—”

“Get _in_ , Dirk!”

He really has very little choice, so he does as Todd says, grabs the handle and climbs into the driver’s cabin of the forklift. There’s only one seat. The moment Dirk’s sat down, Todd scrambles up into his lap. “Drive!”

“ _Me_?”

There’s a metallic clang as a bullet hits the side of the vehicle. A scream escapes him, then another when the forklift’s engine comes to life. Todd must’ve found the ignition.

“Keep your foot on the pedal and try to go straight!”

“Oh God.” Dirk peers over Todd’s shoulder that’s pressing right against his nose, reaches around him to grasp the steering wheel, and puts his foot down on the gas. It’s not like driving a car, there’s no delay or give at all. The forklift jumps forward immediately, one prong smashing into a stack of plastic boxes and toppling them over. Hundreds of orange prescription bottles spill out and scatter across the floor.

“Sorry!”

Todd in his lap is twisting, keeps shifting and obscuring Dirk’s view. He’s about to snap at him to hold still when he realizes that Todd is trying to aim the Taser. In the rear view mirror, Dirk spots a security guard closing in behind them. The muzzle of the man’s gun looks very big and black and terrifying. 

“Do something!”

“I’m trying! Hold still.”

It’s easier said than done. The factory floor is an obstacle course of work stations, boxes, metal shelves, and people, and Dirk isn’t good at obstacle courses when he’s driving a vehicle he’s familiar with. The people, at least, are smart enough to get out of the way. He knocks over three tables, two more stacks of plastic boxes, and scrapes against a second forklift before the broadside of a shelf appears out of nowhere right in front of them.

The forklift slams into it, scoops its prongs underneath the lowest metal board. Momentum tosses an arsenal of small storage cartons, little plastic bottles, and pill jars at them. There’s a hellish screeching as the forklift pushes the shelf’s metal feet over the concrete for a stretch until it comes to a halt.

Dirk can barely hear himself scream over the racket.

“Got you!”

Todd has kept his head during the collision. With the forklift stationary, taking aim is easier. There’s a sizzling sound and a twang. The Taser hits the security guard right in the chest. His whole body jerks, and he drops like a rock.

“Yes!” Dirk does an air punch. His elation is immediately replaced with horror as Todd chucks the Taser aside. “What about all the other ones?”

“It only has a single shot!”

Right. Farah said something about that. Dirk throws a terrified glance at the group of security goons who are closing in fast. “What now?”

“How does the—god _dammit_ —”

Todd yanks a lever. With a clutter of shelf contents raining to the floor, the forklift’s fork does what it’s meant to do and lifts. The feet of the shelf lose their grip on the floor. Dirk, with a presence of mind he’ll be quite proud of later, stomps his foot on the gas pedal.

“Holy shit!” Todd sounds a bit freaked out, too. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!”

With the shelf obscuring their view, there’s very little they can do to avoid running into each and every single thing standing in their way. On the upside, their rampage through the factory floor creates enough mayhem for the security guards to have a hard time getting ahead or taking aim between knocked-over tables and panicking factory workers. There’s a shot now and again, but none of them come even close to finding their target.

When they finally come up to the wall, they pile an end moraine of considerable volume right up against the concrete.

“Door!”

They scramble out of the forklift and stumble through another set of swinging double doors. This one leads into a foyer, the only place in the facility so far that seems to have been built to represent. Shiny marble covers the floors, a glass-and-chrome reception desk runs along the wall, and there are even a couple of potted plants.

There are also another three security goons. Dirk breaks into a sprint and goes for the exit door.

“Get them!”

The door is a revolving one. Todd squishes into the compartment alongside Dirk. They more fall than walk through, right onto another large patch of asphalt on the other side.

There’s a road up ahead leading down the mountain. If they can make it past the gate, they’ll be off private property.

They’re halfway there, ducking the bullets from the security guards who’ve stopped next to the door (and, frankly, are in dire need of some gun accuracy training) when a deafening noise makes Dirk’s heart skip.

“What _now_?”

It’s some sort of alarm, reminiscent of Blackwing’s variety of military alerts, only ten times louder. It’s whooping from speakers mounted to the side of the building. Dirk throws a glance over his shoulder. The security guards are quickly abandoning their posts and heading back inside.

“Todd?” He stumbles to a halt. “What’s going on?”

Todd takes a couple of moments before he notices that Dirk’s stopped. He’s clearly reluctant to interrupt his run. “I have no idea, but I’m sure it’s bad. Come on!”

Todd has no idea how right he is. In all honesty, Dirk doesn’t, either, but the bad-wrong, terrible-things-are-coming feeling he’s having is strong enough to fuse his feet to the ground.

He lifts his eyes to the top of the building, where the white metal walls end in a sharp line against a cold, white, winter sky. Somewhere not that far away, there’s a sound: something huge shifting. Unfurling. 

“Dirk?”

Todd feels it, too. He _must_ be feeling it; it’s so strong it’s deafening. He comes up next to Dirk. Without thinking, Dirk grabs his hand.

“Something really bad is about to happen.”

The words are barely out of his mouth when there’s a loud, snapping flap. It comes again and again, faster every time. The whiteness of the building bleeding into the sky wavers, air swirling. Dirk holds his breath.

Something _huge_ slides into view.

First it’s just a dark, narrow point—like a scaled, titanic arrowhead. It’s followed by a long stretch of black, leathery flesh. There’s another flapping sound, loud enough to make Dirk’s ears hurt, and then the wings come into view.

“Is that—” Todd’s voice is high-pitched, thin. His hand clenches Dirk’s in a death-grip. “Shit, Dirk, is that a fucking dragon?”

“I—”

The dragon hauls its wings up, snaps them down, shoots ahead and up. It twists in the air, neck curling, and lets out a blood-curdling roar.

“Yes!” Dirk’s paralysis splinters, adrenaline flooding his body like he’s never felt before. “Fuck, yes, _run_!”

They take off towards the gate. The dragon in the air above them uncurls and comes around. There’s a sound like water rushing, except it’s accompanied by a blast of hot air on the back of Dirk’s neck. From the corner of his eyes, he can see a bright orange light as the dragon burns a line of fire into the asphalt behind them.

He tries to curse. What comes out is just panicked screaming.

They pass the gate. The road behind it is nestled between coniferous forests stretching out left and right, covering the steep mountainsides where the factory hasn’t claimed their space. For a split-second, Dirk dares to hope that the cover of the trees will be enough to deter the monster chasing them, but no such luck. With a crack of brittle branches, one of the trees by the side of the road catches fire.

“We’re going to die!” Dirk’s never run this fast in his life. “We’re going to die, we’re going to die, we’re going to—”

“Down here!”

Todd’s grabbed his hand again and is pulling him off the road in between the trees. That seems like a terrible idea, Dirk wants to say, an _awful_ idea; trees burn really easily, and he’s not into the idea of being roasted alive in a hot, forest-y oven.

Then he realizes that the ground in the forest is covered in snow, which seems like a decent way to stop fire from spreading enough to create just that.

Getting ahead here is much slower than on the road. The snow makes it impossible to see where you’re stepping, which, in a forest situated on uneven, steeply sloping ground, is inconvenient to say the least. Panting and flailing, they make their way deeper into the woods.

The trees grow denser, the light sparser. Eventually, the air above them turns quiet.

Todd stops behind a large tree, cowers down, and gives Dirk a sign to do the same. He puts a pointed finger over his mouth.

Dirk doesn’t need to be told twice. He’s shaking, half from fear and half from cold, but beyond that, he keeps as quiet as a church mouse.

Minutes pass. Once, there’s a far-away sound of leathery wings beating. Dirk’s heart almost stops. But the sound doesn’t come again. No trees catch fire, either.

At long last, the forest lies as still and silent as a snow-covered mountain forest should.

Dirk tugs on Todd’s sleeve. “Is it gone?”

“I think so.” Despite his words, Todd doesn’t move. “It’s probably safe now.”

“Okay.” Dirk nods, takes a deep breath. That was one of the scariest things that has happened to him in his life. But he’s fine. He didn’t die. “Okay. Getting up, then. Getting— _shit_!”

As he’s getting to his feet, the ground suddenly breaks away underneath him. He falls a terrifying distance, lands badly at the foot of the overhang and twists his ankle. Then he’s rolling down the slope, branches and roots scratching every inch of exposed skin. He gets the wind knocked out of him as he slams sideways into a tree, scrapes his hand as he just misses a branch he tries to grab for support. Arse over teakettle, he goes down the rest of the slope, until it finally spills him headfirst into a ditch.

Face-down in a patch of snow, he stays where he is. His mouth tastes of dirt. His entire body is agony.

Maybe he did die, and this a weird, hyper-realistic sort of hell.

“Dirk?” Todd’s shouting from somewhere up the slope. He sounds quite far away. “Dirk, Jesus, are you okay?”

“No.” It’s too quiet for Todd to hear, of course. “No, I’m not.”

Branches crack and leaves crinkle. Todd’s probably climbing down after him. He really shouldn’t, Dirk thinks to himself, he’s going to lose his footing and fall, and that would be stupid and painful and also Dirk’s fault for being a clumsy idiot.

“I’m fine,” he says a bit louder, then, even louder yet, “Be careful.”

The cracking of branches doesn’t stop, but Dirk thinks that it possibly grows a bit less frantic. Slowly, very slowly, he rolls himself onto his back. A whimper escapes him as every bone in his body protests the movement. It’s especially bad in his right side, the same side where not so long ago someone stuck a knife in. God, he hopes he didn’t break any ribs.

By the time Todd makes his stumbling arrival at the bottom of the ditch, Dirk’s managed to sit up, one arm wrapped around his midriff. He’s at the moment trying to figure out if he needs to be sick, and, if so, if he should risk the pain of leaning sideways.

Todd distracts him by dropping to his knees in the snowy mud next to him.

“Shit, Dirk.” Todd’s eyes are wide, his voice shaky. “That looked really bad.”

Dirk gives him a plaintive look. “That _felt_ really bad.”

Todd’s mouth twists in sympathy. “Anything broken?”

“I don’t know. Nothing essential, I should hope.” A violent shiver runs through him and sets off twinges of pain in several parts of his body. He grimaces. “Todd, I think I’d really like to go home now.”

“Yeah. About that.” Todd squints up the other side of the ditch. It’s a much shorter slope without trees that seems to lead up to a road, though it’s hard to tell in the rapidly vanishing light. “Any idea where we are?”

“Beyond ‘in the mountains’? No.” He uncurls for long enough to stick two fingers into his jacket pocket and fish out his new phone. “Do you think we’ll get any reception out—oh, bloody hell.”

His phone, his new, shiny phone that he paid too much money for, that he picked over the cheaper model because it came in a truly exciting ombre shade of metallic purple-to-turquoise, has a massive crack across the screen. When he presses the button, nothing happens.

A lump forms in his throat. It feels even worse than it would anyway because he knows how monumentally stupid it is to cry over a broken phone.

He keeps his head down, wipes his eyes, keenly aware of the look of sheer panic on Todd’s face.

“Uh, Dirk? Are you okay?”

“I’m really tired.” His voice, thankfully, only wavers a little. “I’m very tired, and very cold, and also—I’m also quite hungry, actually.”

Todd pats his pockets, his face going through a range of expressions until it settles on apologetic. “I only have this.” He holds out a stick of gum.

Dirk stares at the squished strip of silvery wrapping foil. It’s a touching gesture, really, but also a bit inadequate. Sometimes Dirk wonders if the reason it’s so comparatively easy to be around Todd is that Todd knows almost as little about how real human interaction is supposed to work as Dirk does.

Eventually, Todd pockets the gum again and pulls out his phone instead. “I’m only getting EDGE out here.” He gets to his feet and holds his phone up in the air.

“Better than nothing.” Dirk has no idea what EDGE is, but he hopes it’ll get them home. “Can’t you just call Farah?”

“That’s the plan. She needs a location to pick us up, though, right?”

“Right.”

He stays where he is, holds his bruised side and tries not to notice the various other spots in his body that are starting to chime in with pain signals, while Todd wanders off in search for a few more bars. Halfway up the treeless slope, he seems to find success.

Dirk hears snatches of Todd’s conversation with Farah, but nothing that tells him how long it’ll take for her to get here. He closes his eyes, turns his attention inwards and listens.

All he finds is deafening silence. There’s not a hint of a hunch to be had, nothing that tells him what to expect from this situation or what to do next.

Typical. As much as the universe loves to put him through the wringer, it’s always gone by the time the consequences roll around. Some days, Dirk really doesn’t like it very much.

“Farah’s leaving now.” Todd comes back over. He, too, looks a bit worse for wear. The dusky twilight hides the worst of it, but there’s a tear in Todd’s sleeve that must be letting the cold in. “She’ll be about three hours. Apparently we’re, like, way out in the boonies.”

“Anywhere near Mount Rainier?”

“South of it, actually. How’d you know?”

Dirk shrugs, not in the mood to explain about Farah’s phone tracking endeavours. He holds out a hand. “Help me up?”

It’s easier said than done. Turns out his ankle, which had been comparatively meek up until now, was only waiting for him to put any weight on it. The moment he does, it gives way, spills him against Todd and sends searing lances of pain up his leg.

“Shit!” Todd barely manages to keep them both upright. “Jesus, Dirk!”

“Sorry.” Dirk clenches his teeth, sucks in gasps of air. “ _Ow_.”

“Is it broken?” Todd peers down. “Are you going to be able to climb up to the road?”

“Why do you think I can answer that?” It’s a bit snappish. Todd doesn’t deserve it, but after the day he’s had, Dirk can’t really help it. “Come on. It’s not like we’ve got a choice.”

Dirk’s arm around Todd’s shoulder, they limp along the ditch to find the least steep path to the road. There isn’t really one, but eventually they opt for a spot that at least offers a variety of handholds in the form of bushes and small shrubs.

Dirk’s not entirely sure how he manages the ascent. By the time he heaves himself over the edge and onto the shoulder of the road, he can feel his heart pulsing in the back of his throat. His eyes are burning, and he blinks away moisture as he squints up at Todd’s dark silhouette leaning over him.

“Hey. Hey, well done. We made it.”

Dirk smiles, then winces. “How long till Farah gets here?”

“Uh …” Todd consults his phone. “Two hours, forty-five minutes.”

That’s not what Dirk wanted to hear, but he ignores the pang of disappointment in favour of watching Todd’s hands. The illumination from the phone’s display shows angry scratches across Todd’s knuckles, surrounded by too-pale skin. Dirk reaches out to brush his fingers against them. As expected, Todd’s hands are freezing to the touch.

Dirk frowns. “Are you going to be okay?”

There’s wariness in Todd’s eyes. Dirk’s not sure if it’s directed at him, or the very real possibility of a looming pararibulitis attack. Cold can set off the disease, and so can stress, and they’ve had plenty of both.

“I think so. Honestly, if I was going to have an attack, I’d’ve probably had it around the time the freaking dragon showed up.”

Dirk tilts his head in acquiescence before he starts the laborious task of sitting up. “Perhaps your new meds are working.” He hisses a breath through his teeth, shifts until he’s sitting next to Todd in a way that he’ll be able to tolerate for the next one hundred and sixty minutes. “That would make at least one good thing to have come out of today.”

“What?” Todd gives him a lop-sided smirk. “You mean you didn’t enjoy the involuntary, four-hour van ride?”

Dirk huffs a laugh. “Not particularly, no.”

“What about the forklift chase?”

“Oh, God.”

Todd snorts, reaches out with his hand. Dirk follows it with his eyes, surprised to find it eventually nudging against his own. He takes it, more gently than he’d probably need to, cups it in both of his palms to provide a modicum of warmth.

“The dragon was kind of cool,” Todd says. Dirk can’t really see it in the dark, but it sounds like he’s smiling. “I just about shit myself, but man. It was a _dragon_.”

“It was.” Dirk’s never seen one before, wasn’t aware they existed, and it was certainly magnificent. But he also knows that he always would’ve seen it. The dragon sits at the centre of the web of vague intuition that is this case. Dirk was unequivocally fated to cross its path. The really amazing thing about the dragon—

The really amazing thing about the dragon is that Dirk didn’t see it alone.

“I’m glad you’re here, Todd. It would—well, frankly, it would suck to be doing this on my own.”

The moment he says it, he wishes he could take it back. Todd’s presence beside him grows rigid. He pulls his hand back from Dirk’s.

“Yeah, well. Let’s just wait till Farah gets here.”

“Todd—”

“Let’s just wait, Dirk, okay?”

Dirk closes his mouth, interlaces his fingers and tucks them into his lap.

Today is just not his day at all.


	5. Chapter 5

Farah shows up eventually and is horrified at the state they’re in. Dirk wants to kiss her when she reveals that she brought sandwiches and a set of comfy clothes each. Changing is beyond painful, but worth it even just for getting rid of the cold, wet jeans that were clinging to his legs.

Todd takes the passenger seat while Dirk crawls in the back. Farah’s car is bigger than most Seattle apartments, which means Dirk can lie down and bury himself under one of the blankets that Farah, literal angel that she is, also brought along.

She tries to keep them talking. About twenty minutes into the drive, Dirk takes initiative and reassures her that they’re perfectly warm by now and merely tired. Reluctantly, she lets them go to sleep.

He comes around to a stationary vehicle and Farah gently nudging his shoulder. She’s pulled into the parking lot of Seattle’s First Hill Hospital, and she wants them to go in and get themselves looked at. Todd seems amenable if less than thrilled. Dirk, with all due love and respect for Farah, has no intention to cooperate.

“I’m not going in there.”

He doesn’t even stick his head out from under the blanket.

Farah sighs. “Dirk, you’re hurt. You could barely move earlier.”

“I don’t need to move. I need to sleep.”

“And you’ve been in the cold for hours,” she continues as if he hadn’t said anything. “You could be suffering from hypothermia. Uncharacteristically irritable behaviour is a symptom.”

“It’s not that uncharacteristic.”

That’s Todd from the passenger seat. He sounds half asleep. Dirk assumes his agreeability with Farah’s plan is a ‘path of least resistance’ sort of thing.

“I’m not going back into the hospital,” he repeats, pulls the blanket up further. The thought of exposing himself to the bright lights of an emergency department and the prodding hands of medical staff right now is making him feel sick to his stomach. “If I still feel bad in the morning, we can talk about it.”

There’s a tense pause. “Fine,” says Farah. “Don’t do me any favours. But if your ankle ends up with a permanent glitch, or if a broken rib stabs you in the heart overnight, that’s not on me.”

That graphic image almost makes him reconsider, but by then it’s too late. The door’s slammed, and Farah is getting back into the driver’s seat.

“I’ll stay over,” says Todd. “All right, Dirk? That way, if there are any problems, you won’t be alone.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.” It’s ungracious at best, and Dirk immediately regrets it. “Sorry. You can stay if you want. The sofa’s still made up.”

“Right.”

“Do _you_ want to go in?” That’s Farah speaking to Todd.

“I think I’m fine,” Todd replies. “I was sort of cold earlier, but I’ve warmed up now.”

“Suit yourself.”

From there, it’s not long before they pull up to the apartment building. Stairs are out. About halfway between the lift and his door, Dirk has to force himself not to just lie down on the floor and go to sleep right there in the hallway.

Todd and Farah deposit him in his bed. Farah brings a glass of water and the prescription painkillers that were still sitting on the kitchen counter.

He accepts them, feeling somewhat chagrined. “I’m sorry for—” He waves a hand. “Grouchiness. There was just—” He frowns. “There were a lot of things today. The past few days, really.”

“It’s fine. I just don’t want you to be hurting and not getting help.” Farah sounds like she means it. Dirk is overcome with gratitude for the amazing friends he’s made. “If you need something, Todd’s right outside, okay?”

Dirk nods, nibbles on his lower lip. “Is he okay? I—with the dragon and the fire and the falling down mountains, I fear I wasn’t being as attentive as I should have been. If he needs to go to the hospital—”

“I don’t think he does.” Farah squints at the door. “He seems suspiciously fine for someone who’s spent several hours sitting on cold asphalt in sub-zero temperatures.”

“Good.” Dirk nods. “That’s good.”

Farah tilts her head. Her eyes narrow. “Did you say dragon?”

“Right.” Of course. She wouldn’t know about that. He opens his mouth, closes it again. “Tomorrow, all right? I promise.”

She gives him an arched eyebrow. “You’d better. Get some rest, all right?”

“I plan to.”

She leaves the room, turns off the light. Dirk lets himself sink into the mattress and waits for the painkillers to kick in.

Moments after Farah’s out the door, there’s a rustling in the wardrobe, followed by a soft thump. Claws click on the floor. The mattress dips, and the cat makes an appearance at the foot of the bed.

“Hello there.” Dirk squints at her in the semi-darkness. “Still here, then?”

She gives no indication that she heard him, just settles down and goes to sleep.

Before long, Dirk does the same.

\------

He wakes up with his bladder full to bursting. He kicks the covers aside and, without fully opening his eyes, shuffles to the bathroom. As he’s doing his business, a feeling steals up his spine that something is weird.

He stands at the sink to wash his hands, his shoulders migrating up to his ears in creeped-out discomfort, when he realizes that he’s _standing_ on his own two feet without falling over.

He gropes for the light switch, squints at the sudden brightness. Pulls the leg of his jogging trousers up to reveal a perfectly normal, unbruised, un-sprained ankle.

That is _very_ weird.

He pulls his sweater off, the one that Farah brought with her to pick them up. Putting it on last night was an ordeal that brought tears to his eyes; taking it off now is as easy as you please. He inspects his ribcage, his right side which felt very broken-ribs-and-bruised-liver last night.

It’s fine. There isn’t a single scratch on him.

He marches back into the sitting room to where Todd is buried under a mound of blankets on the sofa. The light that’s falling in through the windows tells him that it’s not as early as it feels, so he doesn’t feel too bad about shaking Todd awake.

“Todd.”

Todd grunts, smacks his lips, and tries to push Dirk’s hand away. Dirk evades him and prods his shoulder once more. “Todd, wake up.”

“What?” Todd squints up at him, the corners of his mouth pulled down unhappily.

Dirk smiles, spreads his arms out at his sides. “I’ve developed speed-healing.”

“You what?”

“I’m healed!” Dirk turns in a circle to allow Todd a three-sixty-degree view. “Like last time. It must be a new power.”

Todd sits up. His hair is standing up every which way, giving him a delightfully startled look.

His expression is one of confusion, though. “What the hell, Dirk?” He reaches out, but this time, Dirk has the presence of mind to take a step back before Todd’s fingers can startle him into jumping again. He crosses his arms, suddenly awkward without a shirt on.

“I don’t know. But for my part, I’m happy enough. Finally a power that is actually useful.”

Todd wets his lips, pulls his hand back and tucks it back under the blanket. “Your powers are useful.”

He sounds defiant, like he’s offended on Dirk’s behalf. Which is just silly. “You yourself said the exact opposite literally less than twenty-four hours ago.” Dirk waves a hand. “Doesn’t matter. This is new, and it’s quite exciting, don’t you think?”

“It’s—something.” Todd finally extricates himself from the covers and pushes his legs over the side of the couch. Dirk notices that he must’ve taken off his jogging trousers before he went to bed. “Has this happened before? You developing new powers?”

“Not as such, no.” Dirk frowns. He’s not sure he’s ever heard of it happening, not with any of the Blackwing subjects. But— “Brains don’t actually finish developing until age twenty-five. It might have something to do with that.”

“Twenty-five.” Todd gives him a look. “How old are you again?”

“Well—older than that. But maybe it’s different when you’re—”

“Weird?”

“—holistic.”

“Right.” Todd blinks, scrubs a hand over his face. “Well—I’m glad you’re all healed up. If you don’t mind, I kinda need a shower first thing. I still have like half a forest all over me.” He gives Dirk a once-over, eyes lingering on Dirk’s chest for a moment. “So do you, actually.”

Dirk runs his fingers through his hair and comes away with a handful of pine needles. “I suppose speed-healing doesn’t include insta-cleaning.”

“Shame.” Suddenly, Todd leaps to his feet. “Dibs on the bathroom!”

Dirk’s too startled to be much of a competition, so Todd ends up with the shower, while Dirk puts the kettle on and investigates breakfast options. They are exceedingly sparse, considering his fridge still hasn’t started to magically fills its own shelves when he’s out of the house.

He ends up locating a wad of bills in an envelope stuffed into his copy of _David Copperfield_. There’s a coffee shop down the road. That’s breakfast-y enough. This time, Dirk will even be able to pay his own way.

Todd shouts from the bathroom about not having any clothes, so Dirk goes into his room to see if there’s anything that might fit. He has a whole drawer of online orders in sizes that he thought would fit him but don’t. After some rooting around, he finds a shirt and jeans that both go together and might work for Todd’s smaller stature.

The cat watches him from the bed. When he’s about to slide the drawer shut, she comes over. With a casual, nothing-to-it leap, she jumps up to inspect the stacks of never-worn clothes. She sniffs and prods at them with her paws before giving Dirk a look of reproach.

“Are these not to your liking?”

She thumps to the floor and clacks out of the room. Dirk follows. He leaves the clothes outside of the bathroom door, calls to let Todd know, and goes into the kitchen.

The cat’s standing next to the fridge and looking at him like she hasn’t eaten in days. Which, actually, she hasn’t. He’s about to inform her that regretfully, he doesn’t even have any food for himself, when he remembers the box of kibble-not-peanuts in the fridge.

“This has got to be a joke.” He bought that days ago! He wasn’t even on the case yet. “That _wasn’t_ a thing, I just grabbed the wrong—oh, who am I even kidding.”

Due to his coincidental mistake that apparently wasn’t a coincidence, the cat ends up with a bowl of little brown pellets that smell strongly of processed meat and that she starts devouring immediately. Almost as an afterthought, Dirk puts down a bowl of water, too.

“Are we having breakfast?” Todd joins them just as Dirk puts away the kibble. “That’s great, I’m starving.”

“There’s still no food—well, no food except cat food—but we can head down to the coffee shop. They have doughnuts.”

“Why do you have cat food?”

“For the cat, Todd. Obviously.”

“The cat?” Todd looks around and spots the animal in question. He clearly wasn’t expecting her, judging by the way he startles. “Jesus! What is she doing here?”

“She’s been here since night before last. She was sleeping in my bedroom.”

“You were hiding the cat? Why?”

“I wasn’t hiding her. She followed us home, remember?”

“She—so, she’s a thing, right?” Todd opens the fridge to disappointment (shows how much he actually listens when Dirk speaks) and opts for some hot water from the kettle instead. He dumps in a spoonful of instant coffee while Dirk makes tea. “She’s connected to the case. She must be.”

“Yes, about that.” Dirk squishes the bag around in his murky, too-dark tea and makes a mental note to buy milk. “I realized I actually don’t even know what this case is.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, normally, a case starts with—something. Someone brings it to me.” Dirk leans against the counter, puts the tea aside to cross his arms. He doesn’t even have any sugar. “Nobody ever brought this to me. It just—started happening. All around me. Stabbing me and shoving me down mountains. But nobody’s ever said what I’m even meant to _do_.”

Todd looks like he hadn’t thought about that yet, either. He pulls a face and squints. “Maybe you’re meant to—kill the dragon?”

Dirk’s about to protest—kill the dragon, not likely, did Todd take note of the sheer size of that thing?—but he doesn’t get a chance. At Todd’s words, the cat arches her back, exposes red gums as she directs a hiss at Todd’s ankles.

Todd jumps back, almost splashes coffee onto the shirt Dirk gave him to wear. “Jesus! What is wrong with her?”

“I have no idea.” Dirk crouches down, holds a hand out to the cat who’s still ducking in defence mode. “It’s okay. Todd’s not going to hurt you.”

The cat lets out a displeased yowl and runs past Todd into the sitting room. The yowling continues, until Dirk and Todd follow to see her bushy tail disappear behind the bathroom door.

“That is a weird freaking cat.”

Dirk can’t disagree. He nudges open the bathroom door to see the cat scratching at the door that leads to the agency. “I think she wants us to—go to work?”

“What—oh, fine. Why the hell not?” Todd scowls and crosses the bathroom to open the door. The cat darts through immediately. “Come on, then.”

Dirk’s about to follow him, but stops in his tracks halfway across the bathroom. “No,” he says, holds up a hand. “I am not going to work in my pyjamas again. I’m sorry, Todd, I’ll be as quick as I can.”

“Uh, right. Sure.” Todd seems suddenly embarrassed. He gives Dirk a fleeting once-over before he raises his coffee mug in an awkward salute. “See you when you’re dressed.”

\------

He joins Todd in the offices about half an hour later. Farah is there, too, and so are a box of doughnuts and a tray of hot beverages. Todd not only went to get them breakfast (and paid for it), he also remembered to bring tea, not coffee, for Dirk.

Dirk sips from his take-out mug and feels warm fuzzies that have nothing to do with the drink.

Todd’s already told Farah about the speed-healing. They don’t even discuss it in particular detail, because Todd’s also shared the news about the dragon. Farah isn’t liking it. She’s protesting that they must have mistaken some sort of futuristic military fighter plane for a mythological creature.

Dirk rolls his eyes as he grabs the whiteboard wiper. “This is not the _X-Files_ , Farah. What we saw was definitely a dragon, not a fighter plane.” He wipes the headline about the travelling merchandise off the whiteboard and prints a new one:

THE CASE OF THE FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON

Farah makes an unwilling noise.

“So we have a dragon at some sort of factory that’s built right into the mountains,” Todd says. He’s squinting at the whiteboard, which at this point shows a somewhat random assemblage of names and locations. “We have two guys who transport stolen goods to the plant, and—we have a cat.”

The cat in question chooses this moment to jump up on a near-by side table. She sits down, curls her tail over her paws, and looks like an inspector judging the quality of their work.

Farah raises an eyebrow. “Is the cat significant?”

“No idea,” says Todd.

“Very,” says Dirk at the same time.

They exchange a glance. Todd frowns. “Do you know something you’re not sharing?”

“What? I shared the cat!” Dirk points at the whiteboard where it says “cat” in bold letters. “Come on, Todd, of course the cat is significant.”

“So—is the guitar significant?”

“What guitar?” Farah is beginning to sound suspicious.

Dirk exhales. “I don’t _know_.”

“The cat showed us a guitar, and we brought it home.” Todd’s explanation only seems to raise more questions for Farah (one of them possibly about whether or not they obtained the guitar illegally), but Todd doesn’t let her get a word in. “So if you sometimes know and sometimes don’t know, doesn’t that mean that when you don’t know, it’s not significant?”

“I have no idea, Todd. Probably?” He doesn’t like these questions, mainly because he’s spent most of his life trying to answer them, to no avail.

Farah holds up a hand before Todd can reply. “More importantly—do you know how any of this connects? Do you have a hunch, or anything? So far, they’re all pretty unrelated things happening in an unrelated fashion with no relation to each other.”

Silence follows as they all stare at the whiteboard. Dirk opens his mouth, finds he has nothing to say, and closes it again.

“There’s one thing I don’t get at all.” Todd takes a step closer, points at where Dirk put “Mt. Rainier Factory” on the board. “These guys at the factory, they have a dragon. They have a factory in the mountains, and the means to run an entire lab up there. What the hell do they need a bunch of stolen phones and jackets for?”

He looks from Dirk to Farah. Dirk purses his lips. “It’s a very good question, Todd. Another, possibly related question—what are they even running a lab for? Are they making something?”

“That’s what you do in a lab, right? Make stuff?”

“You can also research stuff,” says Farah. “Analyse things, figure out how they work. Maybe they’re analysing the dragon. If it is a dragon.”

“It was a dragon, Farah.” Dirk huffs. “I would know, it breathed fire at me.”

“So, for dragon-analysis, you need—stolen luxury goods?”

Farah pulls a face, and even Dirk has to say that it sounds a bit far-fetched. He writes ‘stolen luxury goods’ and ‘dragon-analysis’ on the white board nonetheless.

“So—assume they analyse the dragon up there.” Farah sounds like that assumption alone requires quite a leap of faith for her. “And assume further that they need the stolen goods for it, and that’s why they have the whole operation set up with the robbers and the two guys, Chester and Oswald, who ship the stolen goods out to the plant.” She crosses her arms, frowns. “What is their goal? What are they trying to gain from all of it?”

Dirk squints, waits in vain for the pieces to put themselves together in his mind. No matter which angle he looks at it from, it’s just a jumbled mess of incomplete information. “… Knowledge about dragons?” Even as he says it, he knows that’s not it.

Predictably enough, Todd shakes his head. “That place wasn’t just a research base. It was all—commercial. They had a nice reception lobby. That’s not the sort of thing dragon enthusiasts with too much money would have, that’s the sort of thing you have when you’re trying to sell something to clients.”

“So their goal is money.” Farah sounds like she’s glad to be on less mythological ground. “That’s the ultimate goal of any corporation, legitimate or not, right? They want to make money.”

“There has to be a better way to make money off a dragon than hiding it in a secret lab in the mountains.”

“Depends what they’re making in the lab,” Todd says.

Before Dirk can point out that they just covered the fact that they don’t know if the people in that lab were even making anything at all, the doorbell rings.

Surprised, they all turn to the intercom.

“Are we expecting a client?” Farah sounds dubious, as she should, considering they haven’t even advertised the agency anywhere yet. The doorbell chimes again before either Dirk or Todd can answer, and again. And again and again and again. Dirk ducks his head as the chiming gets more frantic. It sounds like whoever’s downstairs just keeps smashing the button down.

“All right!” Farah goes over to the door and hits speak. “Who’s there?”

“Hey!” The chiming stops, and the speaker crackles. “Hey, hi, is that Farah?”

Dirk and Farah exchange a glance. “Who am I speaking to?”

“Tina! You know, Tevetino. Bergsberg. Let me in, man, I gotta talk to you guys.”

“What’s Tina doing here?” Todd sounds as nonplussed as Dirk feels.

“No idea.” Farah buzzes her in. They open the door and hear her panting up the stairs. When she arrives, she’s in an especially crinkled uniform, looking even more dishevelled than usually.

“Oh my God, you guys.” She gasps for air. “The heck’s your elevator, man?”

“It’s on the other end of the—oh!” Before Dirk can finish his sentence, Tina’s pulled him into a tight hug.

“Am I glad to see you.” She slaps his back harder than Dirk thinks should be absolutely necessary. “Am I freaking _delighted_ to see you. You gotta help me.”

As he pulls back, Dirk notices a panicked glint in Tina’s eyes. Granted, Tina panics a lot (she’s a bit like him, that way), but it still makes him frown in concern. “All right. Why don’t we, uh, step into the office?”

They relocate from the landing into the agency’s reception area. Tina looks around, eyes wide. “These are your digs? Freaking awesome, man. You’re, like, proper legitimate and shit.”

Dirk’s chest clenches with pride. “Did you see the sign?”

“It’s impossible to overlook,” says Farah. “Tina, not that I’m not happy to see you, but—what are you doing here?”

“Right, right.” Tina starts pacing up and down in front of the sign, hands twisting. “Did you know that it takes, like, over eleven hours to get here? I started driving and I was like, sure, it’s another state, but, like, can’t be more than eight hours, right? Wrong! Montana is really freaking big!”

Nobody says anything, so Dirk feels compelled. “Driving eleven hours from London in any direction puts you in an ocean.”

Tina stares at him. “That’s nuts.”

“Well—I’d say that’s debatable.”

“Tina!” Farah sounds not a little exasperated. “Why did you drive eleven hours to come here? What’s happened?”

“It’s Hobbs.” Tina’s voice wavers with the admittance, her hands clenching to fists. “He’s sick. Really sick. They don’t know how to help him, and, like, everything about it is really freaking weird. You do weird, right?” She looks at Dirk. “You said you do weird, and you did it really well last time, so I figured you’re the guy to ask for help.”

“Ah.” Dirk feels like a pinned bug under Tina’s pleading stare, which is a terrible reaction to have. He wants to help people, but it seems that any time anyone comes to him for just that, the help they ask for is the kind he’s unable to provide. “Tina, I’m not—I’m a holistic _detective_ , not a holistic doctor. They exist, too! You could—find one, we could help you find one, but—I’m not—”

The hopeful look in her eyes is replaced by disappointment, and Dirk trails off, glances at Todd for help.

“Why don’t you tell us what’s exactly happened?” Todd takes Tina’s arm and gently guides her to a chair. “Sit down, I’ll, uh, I’ll get you something to drink. All right?”

“All right, yeah. Okay.” Tina sits down, kneads her hands in her lap. Todd throws Dirk a pointed glance, which Dirk after a moment realizes means he should get a glass of water. “Here,” he says as he hands it over. “We don’t have a coffee for you, sorry. We didn’t know you’d show up.”

“That’s fine.” Tina doesn’t drink the water, just turns the glass in her hand. Farah motions Dirk and Todd to take a step back.

Eventually, Tina seems to find words. “Farah, you know this, ‘cos you were in the hospital with us. You two probably don’t. Hobbs has diabetes.”

“Oh,” says Dirk, wets his lips. That does sound bad.

“That’s not—it’s not the problem.” Tina must’ve seen his thoughts in his face. “He’s had it since he was a kid, he’s fine with it. He’s got a little thing that he takes his blood sugar with, and he—dude, you should see him with his needles, he’d put any junkie to shame. It’s freaking hard-core, he just jams them in right through his clothes.”

Todd pulls a face, and so does Farah. “That’s not very hygienic,” she mutters.

Tina points a finger at her. “That’s what I said! He says it’s fine, though. He’s been doing it like that since he was a kid, apparently. I’ve never seen him have any trouble. He just doesn’t like to talk about having it because people always tell him it’s because he’s got a bit of extra weight, but it’s not that. Something in his body just stopped working, that’s all.”

Dirk shifts. All this talk about needles is making him uncomfortable. “So—did he get another disease? Like pararibulitis?”

“What?” Tina squints at him. Todd throws him a look, too.

Dirk holds up his hands. “It would be a weird coincidence, and that’s kind of what happens a lot around me.” He waves at Tina. “Continue.”

“He started a new treatment.” Tina relaxes a little as she starts telling the story proper, finally takes a drink of water. “Something with pills. He said it’s better because he wouldn’t have to give himself shots anymore. And I’m like, sure, Hobbs, go for it. No reason to stop him, right? He normally knows what he’s doing.”

Farah weighs her head, but has the good sense not to protest vocally.

“So, like, day before yesterday I come into the station, and he’s there like normal, but he’s—weird. He’s like he’s got a really bad hangover, but he doesn’t, ‘cos he doesn’t drink when he’s gotta work the next day. He’s responsible like that.” She licks her lips. “And I’m like, yo, Hobbs, what’s up? And he’s like, man, Tina, I think you gotta drive me to the hospital.”

She doesn’t seem to be able to sit still after that, jumps up and starts pacing again. “I’m freaking worried, right, ‘cos Hobbs is like the most chill guy ever and he wouldn’t say shit like that if it weren’t serious. And it was. Serious, I mean. When I took him in, they took his, like, sugar levels, and they were way up high. Like, _way_ up high.”

“How high?” Farah’s question makes Dirk jump; he’s on the edge of his seat.

Tina shakes her head. “I don’t know, some really high number, but, like, Hobbs isn’t even that worried, right? He’s like, aw shucks, guess the new treatment’s not working, just get me fixed up and I’ll go back to stabbing myself in the gut four times a day, or whatever.”

And there Tina stops, her entire body wound up like a spring. Dirk watches her, barely daring to breathe.

“They couldn’t help him,” Tina says eventually. Her voice wavers. She shakes her head, curls her hands to fists. “They gave him insulin and, like, fluids and everything, and things should’ve gone back to normal, but they didn’t. His blood sugar just wouldn’t go down.”

The way she says it, it sounds like a death sentence. Dirk looks from her to Farah, then over at Todd. They don’t look like they really know what Tina is saying, either.

“Perhaps he just needs to—stay in hospital longer?” Dirk suggests. “Sometimes things take more time to heal up than you’d expect.”

Tina shakes her head—or rather, she shakes her entire body. “No, no, man, it doesn’t work like that. You got high blood sugar, you get insulin, it goes down. That’s how it _works_. The amount they’ve given him—” She frowns, wets her lips. “The doctor told me that the amount they’ve given him, it should’ve killed him. Instead, all that happened is that his levels went even higher, and now—”

She gets stuck again. This time, Farah goes over there, puts a hand on her shoulder. “Now what, Tina?”

“He slipped into a coma last night.” Tina’s eyes shine brightly. Dirk’s throat tightens. “If they can’t get his levels down with insulin, there’s nothing they can do. He’s just gonna die, Farah. Just like that.”

Silence follows. Dirk’s still trying to think of what to say—because they have to say something, right, at least a few words of comfort, they can’t just stand here in shocked speechlessness—when Tina looks at him. She pulls away from Farah and steps closer. “That’s weird, right?” Her eyes are very white and very big. “It’s weird that the treatment that should work, the treatment that always works, that it doesn’t work. That’s not normal! It’s weird, and you said you do weird, so, like—can you figure it out?”

Her eyes bore into him, and he’s petrified. That’s what she wants, that’s why she came here. She wants him to figure it out. She wants him to _fix it_. Echoes of countless alerts ring in his head, shriek at him that he’s wrong, that he did badly, that nothing he does ever works.

They’re not wrong. What good are superpowers if you can’t help people?

He takes an uneven breath. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Tina. That’s not—it’s not—”

It’s not how it works.

“Hey.” That’s Todd. He’s come over, puts a hand on Tina’s shoulder. “Hey, come on.” He tries to guide her away, but Tina won’t budge.

“I just want you to help Hobbs. He’s all I got, I’m all he’s got, it’s—this one should be easy, right? It’s way less complicated than the last one. No people turning into piles of sand, just—”

Dirk takes a step back. He can feel his chest closing on his windpipe. Todd is looking at him with an expression that’s hard to read, but it’s probably disappointment. Todd’s been where Tina is, after all.

“I don’t know why this is happening. I can’t help you, or Hobbs. I’m really sorry.”

“But you said.” Tina stabs a finger into her palm, grits her teeth. “Weird is your thing, you said that. If you can’t fix this, then what _can_ you fix?”

Dirk has no answer to that.

Before the silence can stretch out for too long, Farah steps in.

“Okay, Tina.” Her tone is gentle but authoritative. She takes Tina by the shoulders and guides her a few steps away. “When’s the last time you slept? Not last night, if you were driving.”

“I’m not—” Tina sounds like she wants to protest, but Farah won’t let her. She guides her to the door.

“We’ve got an apartment right next door. You can lie down for a bit, get yourself together, all right? We can figure this out when you’re not quite so wound up.”

“I guess.” Farah has her own kind of magic, a tone of voice that seems to bring people right back from the edge of a nervous break-down. Tina stops halfway, turns around. “Hey, Dirk, like—sorry, man. I just—”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” Farah herds Tina along, throws Dirk a glance over her shoulder. “Dirk understands. We’ll talk about it later.”

The door locks behind them. Dirk stands there and stares, lets his eyes wander over to the sign he felt so proud of earlier. It’s kind of hard to look at right now. “Arguable efficiency”. What’s to be proud of?

“Hey.” Todd steps closer. Not for the first time, Dirk marvels at the fact that Todd still tolerates him being around. “You okay?”

“I think—” His voice snags in his throat. He swallows, frowns. “I think I have to go away, Todd. Thanks for—” He looks around. His eyes catch on the take-away mug of tea, and he picks it up. “Thanks for the tea.”

He’s pretty sure Todd tries to say something else, but there’s a buzzing in his head that drowns out all other sounds. By the time he steps into the street, Todd’s not following anymore.


	6. Chapter 6

Seattle in November is not a kind sort of climate. Especially close to the waterfront, the wind and the frequent sleet combine to weather conditions not particularly accommodating towards anyone unlucky enough to find themselves outdoors.

Dirk’s withdrawn into the entrance way of a shop gallery to stay out of the worst of it, his shoes dripping puddles onto the concrete floor. The freezing rain started when he got off the bus. By the time he’d reached his current shelter, he was soaked.

It’s put a bit of a damper on his mindless flight from the agency. Though mindless isn’t really the right word. When he left, he had a very specific goal in mind. He’s staring at it right now, a small print shop in back of the Pike Place Market building. He’d only have to cross the street, enter through the glass door, and he’d be right where he set out to be when he left the agency.

He’s not doing that, though. Instead, he’s clutching a phone, a new one that he bought minutes ago in a shop right around the corner. It’s only got one number saved, the one that he put in earlier so he could write a text: _Can you come meet me?_

The reply came almost immediately. _Yes. Where are you?_

He’s texted his location to people often enough at this point that he assumes it’d be fairly easy to map out his routines just by looking at his phone data. He supposes if the CIA hasn’t found him yet, they can’t be trying all too hard.

It’s another twenty minutes until Todd shows up, hood pulled down into his face to ward off the rain. Dirk watches him walk up, waves to make him notice the doorway once he’s close enough.

Once out of the rain, Todd pulls his hood off. His hair stands up every which way, and he’s wearing a deep frown and an odd shine in his eyes. “What the hell, Dirk? What are we doing here?”

Dirk points past Todd’s shoulder at the print shop that’s just so visible between two scraggly trees. “You see the shop over there?”

Todd turns around, squints. “Yes?”

“It’s a CIA front.” Dirk pushes off the wall he was leaning against, stands close behind Todd with his hands in his pockets. It makes it hard for Todd to look at him directly, which Dirk is perfectly fine with. “I spotted it the first time I came here after I moved to the city. Well, spotted it. I make a point of looking for CIA fronts whenever I go somewhere new, just so I’ll know which places to avoid.”

“Okay.” Todd sounds unsure of what to do with that information. “So—what are we doing now? Are we staking them out?”

“Why would we stake them out? It’s the CIA. Whatever they’re doing in there, it’s probably fairly boring.” Dirk crosses his arms, squints at the three video cameras that oh-so-surreptitiously cover the shop’s entrance from every angle. “That’s kind of the CIA in a nutshell. _Really_ , really boring.”

He can’t see Todd’s expression, but he doesn’t need to. He knows that Todd is pulling one of his annoyed faces, can tell by the way his shoulders pull up and his voice tenses. “What are we doing here, Dirk?”

An emotion escapes from under the tight lid he’s slapped on them, makes his resolution waver. He doesn’t _have_ to tell Todd why he’s here. He could just make something up, brush it off, and pretend this never happened.

Except he doesn’t think it’s what he’s meant to do. Even for this, he doesn’t know if he’s making his own calls, or if the universe is deciding for him.

“I came here because I was thinking about turning myself in,” he says. “Blackwing’s probably mostly defunct at this point, what with the Kellum Knights and all of that, but if I walked in there, I’m sure they’d manage to rustle up a cell for me.”

As expected, that makes Todd turn around. Dirk has to take a step back to avoid Todd’s shoulder slamming into his chest.

“What the hell?” Todd spreads his hands. “What is wrong with you?”

There are more emotions now, bubbling up from where he shoved them to deal with whenever he feels more capable. The primary one is anger, which probably isn’t fair. “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s just that after years of trial and error, I've finally realized that it’s never going to be anything _but_ error. I can’t make this thing do what I want. I can’t make it—help people. It doesn’t help people. I don’t think it even knows what people are.”

Todd stares at him, opens his mouth, closes it. Shakes his head. Firmly, he grabs Dirk’s arm and pulls him out of sight of the print shop.

“It’s not an “it”, Dirk.” The entrance they were standing in turns into a hallway with shops left and right, most of them small art galleries selling anything from printed t-shirts to pop art. All the way in the back, there’s an abandoned café, some rickety metal furniture left from what used to be its outdoor seating. Todd pushes him down on one of the chairs, takes the one across the table for himself. “Talking about it like that makes you sound crazy. It’s not separate from you.”

“And you would know, of course.” Dirk shifts. He doesn’t really feel like sitting down. “After all, you’re the one who stumbles from one hospital visit to the next because the universe likes to revoke your impulse control. Oh, wait, no. Is that me?”

Todd holds up his hands. “I’ll admit, the past few days have been kind of crazy. Things do get kind of crazy with you around. But that’s part of it, right? That’s part of you, that’s what you _do_.”

“But I don’t get a choice!” His volume rises, and he checks himself on the last word. “Maybe I don’t want crazy. Maybe I want—boring. Maybe I don’t even want to be a detective. Maybe I want to be—a bus driver. Or an accountant.”

“You’d be a terrible accountant.” Todd squints. “And a terrible bus driver, for that matter.”

Dirk gives him a glare. “It doesn’t matter, Todd. The point I’m making is that I get very little choice in what I do at any time. I don’t even know if I’m talking to you because I want to be talking to you, or because the universe thinks it a good idea.”

“Oh, come on. Haven’t we been over this? You quit, remember? In Wendimoor. Except then—”

“Except then I just happened to stumble upon a clue that helped me solve the case. What a grand coincidence. Immediately, I grew convinced that this detective business is worthwhile after all, what with the convenient sense of achievement that came with figuring out the mystery. It completely helped me overlook that not only did I have to save you and your sister from execution that day, and sword-fight our way out of a brawl with a pair of giant scissors, I also got shot in the leg.”

“Dude.” Todd stares at him. The corners of his mouth pull down. “Drop the attitude. It is so unattractive.”

“Well, not everything about me can be a sexy, life-affirming connection to the meaning of the universe. Sorry to disappoint, Todd.” Dirk crosses his arms, pushes his back into the chair. “I do have other qualities besides that one, and some of them, you may not enjoy. Perhaps you should have vetted me more carefully before you decided to become my best friend.”

“ _You_ decided that I was going to become your best friend.”

Todd says it with a smile, so he probably doesn’t mean it to sound like he’s accusing Dirk of holding him hostage. That’s all Dirk can hear, though. It’s what he feels like he’s doing—keeping Todd close with promises he can’t keep, with a complex lie he’s spun to make himself believe he’s fit to be around people.

He looks off to the side, waits for his throat to unclench. “I know what you want from me,” he says eventually. “It’s what everyone always wants. This—connection, this thing that says, _somehow_ , that everything means something.” He turns back, but finds he still can’t look at Todd, so he stares at the table. His hands come up to form a shape, something intangible just beyond his grasp. “I don’t understand it, Todd. I don’t think of it as a part of me because it doesn’t _feel_ like a part of me. It feels like—I feel like a vessel for something that fascinates, and I’m just here next to it going, can you see me? But most people—” He looks up, finds Todd watching him with that shine in his eyes again. Dirk shakes his head. “Most people don’t. And I don’t blame them. A lot of the time, I myself don’t.”

Todd says nothing. While Dirk didn’t dare expect him to, he realizes only then how much he was hoping for Todd to laugh and call him silly. He knows it’s not, of course, has thought about this long and hard enough to know there’s something to it. But if Todd knows that as well, it means that this pipe dream of a detective agency is most likely over.

He puts his hands in his lap, folds them neatly and keeps his eyes downcast. “I’m going to solve this case, because you’re right, it is what I do. Apparently I—debug reality. That is my function. But I have to be honest, Todd, you really shouldn’t stick around for it. Unlike me, you don’t have fate on your side. It is only a matter of time before you—”

“Do this?”

Dirk looks up. Todd must’ve gotten up; he’s suddenly standing next to him. While Dirk’s still trying to read his expression (Dirk would call it nervous, except that makes zero sense) Todd grabs his face, bends down, and plants a kiss on his mouth.

Todd’s face is really cold. Dirk is too startled to reciprocate, so the kiss remains little more than a mashing of lips. It’s very firm, though, executed with a lot of resolve evident in Todd’s eyes when he pulls back.

He doesn’t let go of Dirk’s face. They stare at each other from a few inches’ distance.

Gradually, the steel in Todd’s eyes gives way to uncertainty.

“Did you—was that—” Todd seems to realize he’s still clutching Dirk’s cheeks and quickly lets go. “Did you not want me to do that?”

“I—” Dirk sits up, shifts, leans too hard on the heel of his hand and slips on the damp metal of the armrest. “Ah! I—” He clears his throat. “I didn’t expect you to do that?”

It comes out as a question, much higher than his normal tone of voice. He peers up at Todd, who’s taken a step back.

“Right.” Todd’s fingers curl at his side. He bounces on his toes. “I thought—you did it, so I thought you—”

“I do!” Dirk says quickly, and feels his ears grow hot. “I mean, I did. Do that. I did.”

Two weeks ago, in Todd’s apartment, while leaning over Todd’s guitar with Todd right next to him. Todd’s fingers resting on Dirk’s, showing him where to press the strings down. Todd had been so focused, and Dirk had gotten so distracted, and before he knew what he was doing, he’d pressed a kiss to the corner of Todd’s mouth.

The Incident. They haven’t really had a chance to discuss it. Except now Todd’s apparently picked this moment, of all the ones available.

He puts his hands on the table. Nods his head at the chair across. Todd doesn’t need more prompting and sits back down. His eyes are wide, expectant.

Dirk’s not sure how he’s the one who’s suddenly ended up in charge of this situation.

“You just kissed me.” It’s good to establish firm, common ground. That’s achieved when Todd nods in response. They’re in agreement. Nobody’s hallucinating or denying anything. So far, so good. Dirk clears his throat. “I tell you to get as far away from me as possible, and your response is to give me a kiss.”

Todd opens his mouth, closes it. His hand on the table curls to a loose fist. “You’ve told me to get as far away from you as possible a whole bunch of times,” he says. “I figured I should—make a point. A clear one.”

Dirk narrows his eyes. A suspicion forms deep in his gut. The last thing he wants to do, though, is jump to conclusions. “And—the point you’re making is—?”

Todd blinks. His hands uncurl, palms open on the table. “I kissed you. The point is pretty obvious, right?”

You’d think so. But no. No jumping to conclusions.

Todd’s shoulders sag. “I kissed you because I like you, okay? I like you. That’s why I stick around. The universe thing is—cool—I won’t say it’s not. But it’s not why I’m here.”

“Right.” The suspicion bursts into a small ball of heat in his chest. He bites the inside of his lip. “But—when I kissed _you_ —”

“I’m sorry about that.” Todd sounds it. He’s making the face he makes when he explains about what an arsehole he is. “You caught me off-guard, and I—dude, I didn’t even know you—swung— _any_ way. You never talk about this stuff.”

“What stuff?” The heat in his chest has spread out. It’s making his arms tingle all the way to his fingertips. There’s a smile tugging on the corners of his mouth that he’s not entirely sure where it came from.

“Women! Men. Stuff—like this, Dirk. You grew up in a freaking lab. For all I know, you haven’t even—you know—”

Oh. “For Heaven’s sake, Todd.” Dirk huffs a breath, leans back. “I’m thirty-five. I assure you, I have.”

“All right! Okay. That’s—good.” Todd nods, squints. He looks like a man who has questions, so Dirk quickly pre-empts.

“I am quite open to—any sort of experiences. And I find myself interested. In, well. In you. You’re interesting.”

“Interesting.” Todd’s mouth twists. “That’s a glowing review.”

“I don’t mean it like that.” Despite the cold damp of the air, Dirk feels warm all of a sudden. He rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t know—I _never_ know how much of what I feel is me, and how much is—whatever you want to call it. Fate. The universe. I just—I know that I’ve never felt this drawn to—well, to anyone. Not over the course of more than one case. No, scratch that. Just—anyone. Ever.”

The way Todd stares at him, Dirk gets the creeping feeling that he may have overstepped a line. He receives confirmation when Todd shakes his head, laughs a little, and lowers his eyes. “You don’t mean that.”

“I’d hardly say it if I didn’t.” His throat is starting to close up again. Today is not a good day, emotionally speaking.

“Look, Dirk—” Todd leans forward, rests his arms on the table and spreads his hands like he’s trying to manifest the right words out of thin air. “I don’t know who you’ve had—I don’t know who it is you’ve been dating. I barely know anything about you personally. But what I do know is that you’ve told me many times how lonely you’ve been.” Todd looks up. Dirk has to force himself not to turn away. He has a bad feeling he knows where this is going. “I’m the first guy who’s giving you the time of day. I get how that would make me, well. Interesting. But that’s not—”

“Enough.” Bitterness creeps into his voice as he finishes Todd’s sentence. He crosses his arms tightly, digs his fingers into his sides. “I don’t have a normal life story, I don’t have a sister, or—friends, or a band, so clearly that means I can’t know what I want. Great analysis, Todd. Really excellent. Where’d you get your degree, Shit College for Lousy Armchair Psychologists?”

“Hey!” It’s almost a relief to hear the outrage in Todd’s voice. It’s familiar, and better than the condescension from a moment ago. “Screw you, dickhead. You’re the one who keeps telling me that I’m the first person who’s ever even let you hang around.”

“Yes, well, you keep telling me that the only reason you do is because I make you feel like your life means something. I suppose neither of us is really interested in the other, then.”

Todd’s face crumples. “Aren’t we?”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” He’s done with this conversation. He’s done with sitting in this stupid chair, he’s done with Todd allowing every stupid devil’s advocate argument to undermine his intuition. He jumps to his feet, almost knocks over the table. “I’m going back to the agency, and I’m going to solve this case. You’re welcome to come along. But if you’d like to sit here a bit longer and come up with reasons for why something can’t be true that’s as plain as the nose in your face, please don’t let me keep you from that. It’s clearly a rewarding and fruitful use of your time.”

“Jeez, Dirk.” To Dirk’s satisfaction, Todd gets to his feet, pushes the chair back under the table. “Tell me how you really feel.”

“I _was_ trying to.”

Todd throws up his hands, looks like he wants to say something, but Dirk’s not interested. He picks the shortest route to the bus stop and starts walking.

“I feel like Hobbs is connected,” he says as he moves along at a brisk pace, forcing Todd to jog to catch up. Focus on the case. Ironically enough, it seems the least complicated part of his life right now. “I can’t figure out how, but Tina wouldn’t have shown up out of the blue like that if it weren’t connected.”

“Right,” says Todd. He sounds distracted. Dirk throws him a glance from the corners of his eyes. Under damp strands of hair, Todd is wearing a frown. His eyes are downcast, and his teeth are worrying his lower lip.

He looks upset.

Dirk’s step slows. Todd doesn’t notice and brushes past him, so Dirk reaches out. “Todd.”

Todd stops, turns around. “What?”

“I—” He doesn’t know what to say. Todd seems wary, and that’s the last thing Dirk wants. Everything that’s happened in the past five minutes was very low on the list of things Dirk was hoping would happen, especially in connection to their first kiss. Well, second kiss. “Todd, I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean to be mean.”

Todd’s eyes shift. “Were you mean?”

“I was—” Dirk trails off, distracted by the way Todd’s running his tongue over his lips—just the tip, barely visible, teeth grazing the soft skin there. They’ve never even kissed properly yet, and Dirk would very much like to, except kissing Todd hasn’t turned out too well the two times he’s done it.

He clears his throat, takes a small step closer. “Can we try again?”

Todd looks like he’s not sure what Dirk is asking, and Dirk fears another sequence of misunderstandings that will lead to pointless debates and a row, but then Todd’s expression clears. “You mean—kissing?”

Dirk nods, deliberately avoiding words. Words don’t particularly seem to help.

Todd laughs, pulls his shoulders up. The tips of his ears grow red. “I, uh. I guess—”

That’s all the agreement Dirk needs. He steps closer, puts his hands on Todd’s waist and leans in before this opportunity can slip away. Despite the announcement, Todd seems startled, or maybe he’s a little overeager, because he steps on Dirk’s foot as he tries to get closer. Dirk has to duck down, but it’s actually nice. Like this, he can nudge his nose against Todd’s cheek, make Todd tilt his head back and move into the kiss like they planned this.

The bristles on Todd’s upper lip tickle. They make Dirk smile as he slides his hands around to rest on Todd’s back. He’s trying for soft and careful, doesn’t want to spook Todd any more than he already has—and, to be entirely honest, while he wasn’t lying when he claimed previous romantic experience, the last time he’s done this seems forever ago. He opens his mouth to try for a little bit more, and gives a stifled snort when Todd does away with any caution and immediately sticks his tongue into Dirk’s mouth.

Talking is out, but he manages a guttural grunt in the back of his throat. Todd’s fingers curl against the back of his jacket, his body moves even closer as he presses their lips together more firmly. The ‘shut up’ is clear without any words uttered. Dirk’s eyes close as he relaxes into the kiss, allows Todd to guide them and feels a tremble of warmth spread through his body. Nothing has felt this good in a long time. Nothing has made him this happy in a long time, not finding a clue or solving a case—if it were up to him, he’d just do this for the rest of his life.

But, as always, it’s not up to him.

Todd breaks away suddenly, stumbles back with a gasp. Dirk’s left bereft and disoriented for a moment before he returns to the present. He blinks, steps back, and allows the cold to slip right back in between them. “I’m sorry.” Despite all the signs to the opposite, this is apparently not what Todd wants. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“Nh-nhn.” Todd’s shaking his head. He’s staring at his hands, which he’s holding out in front of him. He doesn’t look like someone pulling back from a romantic encounter they decided was a mistake. He more looks like someone—he looks like someone whose hands have suddenly started hurting.

“Oh, shit.” Immediately, Dirk feels his chest clench up. “Shit. Right. Pills. Do you have your pills?”

Todd nods, starts clawing at the pocket of his jacket, cringing as he tries to use his hands. Dirk is not a violent person, but if there were any way to murder pararibulitis, he’d be looking into ways to purchase a gun right now.

“Here, let—” He steps closer, opens the zipper of Todd’s jacket pocket. There are two prescription bottles inside. It takes him a moment to figure out which one he wants, and Todd lets out a whimper that cuts like a knife.

“Cold,” Todd says as Dirk fumbles with the lid and curses the person who invented safety caps. “My hands are freezing, Dirk, it’s like—”

“Here.” He’s finally managed to make the bottle give up a pill, holds it out between two fingers. “Here, do you—”

Todd’s clutching his hands to his chest, breath coming in short gasps. He doesn’t exactly look like he’s up to fine motor skill performances.

Dirk steps closer, holds the pill to Todd’s lips. Todd closes his eyes, humiliation writ large on his face as he takes the pill from Dirk with his teeth.

Dirk stands there as Todd grimaces, swallows. He’d like to do more, feels awful that he can’t, but this is how this works—even after the kiss they shared only moments ago, he knows that if he tried to touch Todd right now, it’d be unwelcome. As much as Todd hates his disease, he still understands it as a punishment for all the things he’s done wrong in his life.

Dirk can’t say he’s happy to be made an instrument of it.

“It’s not working.” Todd’s breathless, his eyes wide.

Dirk doesn’t understand. “What?”

“This is an attack, right?” There’s a note of panic in Todd’s voice. “It’s not actually this cold, I’m not—ah!”

He doubles up, and screw punishments. Dirk’s next to him in a split-second, grabs his shoulders. “Todd! Todd, what’s going on?”

“Shit. Shit, Dirk, the pill.”

Todd sounds choked with agony, and Dirk still doesn’t get it. Did he give Todd the wrong pill? But Todd’s new pills are white and shiny, like pearls, while his old ones, the ones for the attacks, are red-and-blue capsules. He definitely gave him a red-and-blue capsule.

“It’s not working.” There are tears in Todd’s voice now, and on his face, and Dirk can feel some rise in his own eyes. He wraps his arms around Todd’s shoulders, holds him close in a pointless attempt at protection.

“What do you need? What do you need me to do? There are more pills, I can give you more—”

Todd shakes his head, presses close and stifles a moan against Dirk’s shoulder. “Hospital,” he gasps. His teeth are chattering, and his entire body is shaking. “They can give me a shot, they—”

“Okay!” Hospital, he can do that. He knows where that is, at least, although he has no idea how to get them there, not with Todd writhing in pain and shaking like a leaf. He looks around wildly. There’s a small handful of people in the shop gallery, all too far away to take notice of the transpiring crisis.

“Help!” He shouts it loudly enough for the three closest shoppers to look around. “We need help, please, if you wouldn’t mind.”

They squint at him—an older man in a pair of beat-up biker boots, a tourist off the beaten path with her city guide sticking out of her pocket, and a young woman with a shock of undercut, blue-and-purple hair. Dirk wants to strangle all three of them for just standing there. “Please!”

It’s the young woman with the stylish hair who comes over. Her earrings jangle as she ducks her head to look at Todd, who’s got his face buried in Dirk’s chest and is emitting small, heart-breaking whimpers.

“Dude. What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s got a disease. We really need to go to the hospital.”

“Right, okay. Well, I don’t got a car, but I could call you a Lyft.”

“Can’t you just call an ambulance?”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “You don’t sound like you’re from here. Just so you know, man, ambulance is gonna cost you.”

“ _What_?”

“It’s f-fine,” Todd forces out between chattering teeth. “We’ve got money.”

“Suit yourself.”

The woman dials 911. Dirk realizes he could’ve done that himself, wouldn’t actually have needed to bother her. But like this, at least he’s got his hands free for Todd. “It’ll be okay,” he says, unsure how much that is for Todd’s benefit and how much for his own. “It’ll be fine, has this happened before?”

Todd shakes his head. His lips are starting to turn blue. “N-not to me. Amanda, once. She—”

He interrupts himself with a groan, presses his face into Dirk’s shoulder. Dirk tightens his arms around him. “We really need that ambulance!”

“All right, cool your jets, buddy.” The woman hangs up, points at the exit leading to the street. “Ambulance is coming. They’re heading in from Virginia Mason, so if you can make it down there, you can meet them at the curb.”

“Right. Thank you.”

They leave the really quite helpful woman behind as they make their way out of the pedestrian shopping galleries. The rain’s let off a little, at least. Todd is able to walk, but he’s leaning heavily on Dirk, his teeth chattering as he takes one pained step after the other.

There’s a bench right by the street. It’s covered in a thin film of rain drops, but right now, Dirk couldn’t care less.

“It’ll be okay.” His own voice sounds rather thin. “They’ll be right here. It’s going to be okay. It’ll be just fine, it’s—”

“Dirk?” Todd’s voice is muffled against Dirk’s jacket. Dirk hugs Todd a little closer.

“Yes?”

“P-please shut up.”

“Right.” Dirk tries to quell the panic in his chest. He really needs to be better at this. “Of course. Sorry.”

It feels like it takes the ambulance an eternity to show up, and then another eternity to reach the hospital. At first, the EMTs aren’t thrilled about the idea of letting Dirk come aboard, but they change their minds when the thought of letting Todd out of his sight makes Dirk’s vision go a little grey around the edges. They make him sit down on a seat that folds up against the wall of the ambulance, give him a blanket despite his protests (they have more for Todd, or Dirk wouldn’t have taken it), and tell him to keep his head between his knees.

He doesn’t, because that would mean letting Todd out of his sight after all. Todd’s on the stretcher, the EMTs bent over him and doing a range of things that Dirk assumes will ensure Todd won’t die from imagined hypothermia.

When the ambulance pulls into the bay, they unload the stretcher too quickly for Dirk to stay with Todd. Dirk ends up being herded into the emergency department on his own.

“You gonna stay upright?” The EMT prods him in the back. Dirk flinches away.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m fine. Where’s Todd?”

“Right over there.” The EMT points a bony finger at one of the exam bays. The curtains are drawn, but a nurse in a set of bright red scrubs picks that moment to emerge. The EMT waves him over. “Got a friend of the pararibulitis attack here,” he says. “Good to go, just get him a chair or something.”

He does get him a chair. Dirk ends up perched on a rickety plastic seat between the exam bed and the greenish-blue curtain, holding in his hands a form that the nurse handed him to fill out. The writing on it looks like hieroglyphs, boxes and lines next to acronyms like GCS and COPD. Dirk decides that nobody in their right mind could seriously expect him to deal with this right now, and puts it aside.

“How are you feeling?”

Todd’s in the exam bed, hooked up to a variety of beeping things and buried under several blankets. They made him take off his clothes, which, granted, were a bit drenched. He’s wearing a set of hospital pyjamas now, and he looks even smaller than he does normally.

Talking seems to be too much right now. Todd stays quiet, just miserably shakes his head and grimaces as another wave of shivers wracks his body.

Dirk crosses his arms tightly. He’s not going to lose it.

“I’m not sure how this works when it’s not me who’s in need of medical attention.” He chews on his lip as he considers that statement. He can’t remember a time he had to accompany someone to A&E. “I never realized how stressful this is for the people coming along. It’s really stressful.”

“I’m s—” Todd tries to speak and is cut off by a tremor running through him. He wets his lips, swallows. “I’m sorry I ruined it. I d-didn’t—I mean, I w-wasn’t—”

“You didn’t ruin anything.” Dirk watches Todd’s face, wonders what it is he’ll have to do to reassure Todd that no matter their general disagreements, Dirk’s not going to hold things against Todd that are in no way Todd’s fault. He gets to his feet. He’d love to take Todd’s hand, but they’re buried under the blankets and probably extremely sensitive right now. So instead, he reaches out to brush Todd’s hair out of his face.

Todd looks suspicious at first, eying Dirk’s hand moving towards his forehead. But when Dirk’s fingers brush against still-damp hair, Todd closes his eyes. Dirk may be imagining it, but he thinks he sees Todd’s shoulders relax a little.

“You didn’t ruin anything,” he says again, quiet. “This isn’t your fault, Todd. No matter what you might think.”

Todd pulls a face, something between pained and unhappy, and shakes his head. “N-Not right now— _ah_!”

He cries out in pain, curls in on himself, and cradles his hands against his chest under his mound of blankets. There is not a single thing Dirk can do to help. He’s finding that this side of the A&E experience may actually be worse than being the injured one yourself.

A doctor shows up moments later, wielding a syringe full of clear solution that she injects into the IV in the back of Todd’s hand. He kind of gets in her way, so she pointedly asks him if he’s family.

He really should have known better than to answer “no”.

He comes very close to elbowing a nurse in the face as they shoo him out of Todd’s exam bay. He didn’t even mean to, but a bulky security guard still comes stalking over. The man has to do no more than loom threateningly. Dirk’s not going to start a fist fight in a hospital (or anywhere else, if at all avoidable), so he exits out the swinging double doors without requiring physical prompting.

He ends up standing there, shivering in the freezing rain that’s started up again, unable to do as much as string two coherent thoughts together.

Eventually, he calls Farah and tells her what’s happened.

“Dirk.”

The way she says his name probably means she wants him to listen. He’d probably be wise to do so, but his lips are moving and he’s not sure how to stop them.

“Dirk. _Dirk_! Calm down!”

Even over the tiny phone speaker, that’s quite loud. Dirk sucks in a breath, swallows whatever else he was going to splutter next. His nose feels stuffed, so he sniffs, wipes the rain from his eyes. “Sorry, Farah. Sorry. I’m calm.”

“Okay. Good.” He can hear steps on polished floor boards. Farah’s probably pacing. “Start from the top. What’s happened? Whose number are you calling from?”

“My number.” The question confuses him, until he remembers. “It’s a new phone. I broke the other one.”

“You broke the other new phone?” Farah exhales. “Never mind. What’s happened to Todd?”

“He’s had an attack. We had to go to the hospital.”

“Which one? Are you still there?”

“I—it’s a hospital.” Does the city have more than one? Probably. Dirk’s never thought about it. “They sort of, well, they kicked me out. I was getting in their way.”

Farah mutters something under her breath. Dirk thinks he can hear “can’t take care of themselves” and “goddamn babysitter” in the mix. He can’t really blame her.

“I know how to get home,” he says in an attempt at self-sufficiency. “Are you—you and Tina. Are you still at the apartment?”

“Yes. Tina’s asleep. She’s taken your bed, by the way—she looked like she needed it. I hope you don’t mind.”

“It’s—it’s fine.” He’s got much bigger problems right now than who’s sleeping in his bed. “I’ll meet you there, all right?”

“All right, yes.” He can hear the frown in her voice. “Don’t get hurt on the way, okay? Or—stabbed or robbed or _something_.”

Dirk closes his eyes in resignation. “I’ll try my best.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little late, but to make up for that, it's a long one! Enjoy~

Farah hugs him when he gets to the flat, once again confirming that she’s a better person than most of the people he knows, himself included. She also hands him a tissue and tells him to get changed. They’re both very reasonable suggestions. He’s completely soaked, which apparently doesn’t conceal the fact that there may have been a bit of crying earlier at the hospital.

Once he’s done, he sits on the sofa. There’s a nibbled-on mushroom pizza sitting on the couch table, and he’s eaten half a slice before he realizes it’s probably Farah’s. She doesn’t seem to mind, just comes over and sits next to him.

“She’s still here, then.” Dirk gestures at the cat, who was waiting outside the door when he left the bathroom and has now settled down on a chest of drawers. Her stare hasn’t gotten any less intense.

Farah nods. “She was scratching on the door to be let into the apartment after you two left. I think she wants something, but I’m not sure what it is.”

Dirk squints at her, tilts his head. “What is it you want? Can you tell us?”

The cat opens her mouth to let out a pointed meow.

Dirk sighs. “I still don’t speak cat.”

Farah shifts next to him. “So Todd—you said he had an attack. Did he not have his meds? Why did you have to go to the hospital?”

“They weren’t working.” Dirk picks a mushroom off of the pizza. He’s not sure he even wants it anymore. “He started this new treatment, right? I don’t know if he’s actually told you about that.”

Farah shakes her head.

“It’s experimental, apparently. Pills, too, but—daily, or something, and they seemed to be working quite well, except now—when he had his attack, he took one of the old pills, and it did nothing. I don’t even know if they were able to help him at the hospital, they kicked me out before—”

“But that’s what happened to Hobbs,” Farah interrupts him. She sits up, her eyes bright. “That’s a connection, that’s a very clear connection, Dirk. Tina said Hobbs started a new treatment for his diabetes, right, and then his old treatment failed. Todd—”

“—did the exact same. Oh my God.” It’s so obvious. With so many things going on, he hasn’t had time to look at it all, but this connection is clear as day. It _feels_ clear as day, too, the first solid thread of the holistic web emerging. “Todd and Hobbs both start new treatments, Todd and Hobbs both end up in hospital. Tina!”

He jumps to his feet, runs over to his bedroom and bursts in. Tina sits up with a scream, clutches the sheet to her (completely clothed) chest.

“What!”

She stares at him, wide- and wild-eyed. He drops onto the edge of the bed. “Tina, do you have Hobbs’ medication?”

“Hobbs—what?” Her hair stands up every which way—but then, it usually does. “I don’t have any medication. I don’t do amphetamines anymore.”

“No, not drugs.” God. People take such a long time to wake up. He snaps his fingers in front of her face. “Hobbs’ medication. His pills, the new ones you said he’s taking. Did you bring them with you?”

She stares, opens her mouth. Closes it. “I did not.”

Dirk lets out a growl of frustration, jumps to his feet. “Why not? It’s what you came here for, right, why wouldn’t you bring—ah!”

Tina’s leaning over the side of the bed, and even if her chest is clothed, the rest of her is considerably more naked. She seems to be wearing a pair of panties made entirely of string, which disappears into her crack in a way that looks incredibly uncomfortable. “Tina, I can see your cheeks!”

“That’s what she said.” Tina gives him a lewd grin, holds out her phone that she fished from where she was presumably charging it on the floor next to the bed. Thankfully, the blankets fall back over her lap and provide a modicum of modesty. “Here. I took a picture.”

“Right.” Dirk takes the phone from her. Under an intricate web of cracks, he can make out a prescription pill botte with a red-and-blue trademark logo.

“Swipe left, I took a picture of the pills, too.”

He should swipe left, make sure that the pills look like Todd’s new pills, small and round and white. But he’s distracted by the logo. “I’ve seen this before.”

“What?”

“The logo.” He taps the screen, makes the image flicker. “I’ve seen the logo before. Farah!”

He returns to the sitting room. Farah’s next to the sofa, looking like she was on her way to join them. “What?”

“This logo.” He shoves the phone at her. “Where have we seen this logo before?”

Farah takes the phone, magnifies the image. She shakes her head. “I haven’t. It doesn’t ring a bell.”

“But we _have_.” He knows it like he knows his own name. He knows it’s important, he knows it’s a clue. “It was—up, somewhere, up and—really big.”

“Maybe you’ve seen it on a billboard? These med companies do advertise sometimes—”

“The factory!” He shouts it, jumps in the air just as Tina emerges from the bedroom buttoning her trousers and startling at his outburst. He waves his arms at both of them. “It was on the factory in the mountains. It was a huge logo on the side of it!”

“So—” Farah takes a step closer. Tina does, too, reaches out to take her phone from Farah. “You’re saying that the company who makes those meds, the company who probably also made Todd’s meds, you’re saying that they’re also the ones running a factory that’s keeping a freaking _dragon_ in the attic?”

Tina’s phone clatters to the floor, startling them both into silence.

Tina stares at them with wide eyes. “Did you just say dragon?”

“She did.” They don’t have time for this. “Todd and I took an accidental van ride to a very large factory in the mountains, which turned out to be full of scientists and men with guns, and, coincidentally, a very large dragon who ended up chasing us through the woods.”

Tina’s still staring. Her phone’s still on the floor. “A dragon chased you through the woods.” Suddenly, her shocked expression morphs into a laugh. “Hey, that happened to me, too, once. ‘shrooms, eh? Crazy shit.”

Oh, for goodness’ sake. “I’m still not talking about drugs, Tina.”

“But—”

“What did you actually see in that factory?” Farah doesn’t seem too keen on giving Tina much processing time, either. “You said you saw scientists; did you see what exactly they were doing?”

“Uh.” Dirk scratches the back of his head. “Science? I’m not a scientist, Farah, I don’t know what different sciences look like—oh!”

Another flash of realization hits him, and he jumps in the air. “Prescription pill bottles!” He waves his arms, trying to communicate with gestures what it’s taking him far too long to communicate with words. “We ended up on this big factory floor, right, and we, well, we might’ve caused a bit of mayhem, but what they seemed to have there in abundance were boxes full of prescription pill bottles.”

“What were they doing with them?” Tina asks.

“Were they empty or full?” Farah asks at the same time.

“I don’t know, and—I don’t know.” He squints, tries to remember. Most of his memories of that day ended up drowned in the shadow of the dragon chasing him. “I think perhaps they were shipping them? They had a lot of work stations set up, each with boxes full of prescription bottles. Either shipping them, or—”

“—or filling them.” Farah holds out her hand. “Tina, give me your phone.”

“Right!” Tina pats her pockets, realizes her phone is still on the floor, and bends down to grab it. “Here.”

Farah’s already on her way to the bathroom—or rather to the agency, probably. She waves a hand. “Come on!”

Just as Dirk sets out to follow, the cat jumps off the dresser. She trots after Farah, tail held high and expectant.

Dirk would really like to know what that vibe is that he’s getting off of her. It translates to “very important”, but beyond that, he has no clue.

At the agency, Farah pulls out her laptop, puts it down on a sideboard so Tina and Dirk can look over her shoulder. She takes Tina’s phone, pulls up the picture of the prescription bottle.

“What does the logo actually say?”

Dirk glances over her shoulder, squints. “Anarchism?”

“Dude, the second part is obviously “meds”.” Tina points at the red part of the logo, which is hard to make out behind an especially bad crack in the display. “The first half is—Arab? Arcane? Anal?”

“Arach.” Farah’s already started googling, and has found a results page that shows several variations of the logo at the top. “Arach Meds. Apparently founded in—” She clicks on a link, and the Wiki page comes up. “May this year, by a guy called Scott Boyd. This company isn’t even a year old.”

“Do they say anything about the factory?” Dirk tries to read the page himself, but it’s all stock market information and boring things he doesn’t care about.

Farah clicks an index link. The page skips. “It just says their plant’s in Washington State,” she reads out. “That’s the only location, apparently. That’s weird, isn’t it?” She looks up. “Most companies don’t actually produce in the United States, and when they do, they don’t do it in Washington State. I know nothing about state tax for businesses, but even I know the Midwest would probably be cheaper.”

“Perhaps they need to be at that location because that’s where the dragon is.” Dirk can feel something building in the back of his skull, something rising deep in his gut. He flaps his hands, points at the screen. “Oooh, Farah. Farah. They need the dragon to make whatever they’re making. They need it because—it’s—I don’t know—it’s essential to the process, in some way, perhaps.”

Before Farah can answer, the cat leaps up on the sideboard. She meows, bumps her head against the side of the laptop screen, and starts purring.

Dirk stares at her. “Farah,” he says. “Isn’t “arach” a word for something? Like—some animal? Spider, perhaps?”

Farah’s fingers click over the keyboard. It takes her a moment, but then she pulls up a page that’s blue with black vines ranking around the sides. She scrolls halfway down, stops. Taps her finger against the screen. “It means dragon.” She waves him over, moves aside so he can see. “It means dragon in Gaelic.”

“Their name is literally Dragon Meds?” Tina spreads her hands. “Their name is Dragon Meds, and they have a fucking dragon at their plant. How did Hobbs fall for these guys? They’re clearly evil!”

The cat flips her ears back and hisses. Tina jumps. “Whoa.” She clears her throat. “Um. No offense.”

“People will do a lot of things if there’s a chance it will rid them of a chronic disease,” Farah says. She’s back on the Wiki page. “Why do you think meds are such a lucrative business?”

“That’s cynical.”

“Farah,” says Dirk, his eyes still on the cat. _Give it up_ , he thinks at her. _Just tell me. It’d make all of this so much easier_. “I think we probably need to go back to Mount Rainier.”

“You’re not going on your own this time.” Farah pulls up yet another page, Google Maps this time, and Dirk realizes that she’s already doing prep work for a trip out of the city. “No way am I letting you do that again.”

“Not a chance,” he agrees, holds out his hands. The cat comes closer, allows him to pick her up. “We all need to go. The cat as well.”

Farah throws him a glance, her fingers stilling. “What about Todd?”

Right. Todd. A wave of guilt surges up as Dirk realizes that he completely forgot about Todd for a second there. “He’s—he’s still in hospital. I don’t think they’ll let him out.”

“Todd’s in the hospital?” Tina’s voice flips across two octaves. “The hell’s wrong with him?”

Dirk explains it to her in the shortest terms possible. She doesn’t actually have a lot of questions, just looks at him with disapproval in her eyes. “So your best friend’s in the hospital, and you’re planning to ditch him and go chase a dragon?”

“That’s not—” —what he’s doing, he wants to say. But really, it sort of is. He looks at Farah for help. “We have to go, Farah. I—I can sense it. We _must_.”

He can feel himself freezing up again, torn between two equally strong emotions. The cat in his arms starts purring, kneads his shoulder and snags her claws on his shirt.

“Okay,” says Farah. She’s turning on her own magic powers, making herself a rock of pragmatism to cling to. “Does it matter if Tina stays behind?”

That suggestion doesn’t make any internal alarm bells go off, so Dirk shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t think so.”

“All right.” She turns to Tina. “You call the hospital, then. Ask them about Todd’s condition. If he needs anything, like a change of clothes or a friend to hang out with, you go there. If he gets worse, or if something else happens that’s bad, you call us. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Tina almost manages to stand at attention.

The knot of conflict in Dirk’s chest loosens, and he could’ve kissed Farah. “You always have the best solution to things,” he says with a smile.

He’s not sure what the look means that she gives him, but she doesn’t explain, just waves a hand at the door. “Wait downstairs. I need to get my gear.”

He does as she says, cradles the cat in his arms as he descends the staircase. Underneath the buzz of a case emerging as a solvable pattern around him, there’s still a strong current of uncertainty and concern. He assumes it’s for Todd, and the fact that Todd’s not here with him.

“It’ll be fine,” he tells the cat as he climbs into the passenger seat of Farah’s car. There are still pine needles all over the floor mat from their last trip to the mountains. “Everything will work out fine.”

The cat replies with a fervent “meow”. Dirk decides to take it as a confirmation.

\------

The drive to the Mount Rainier factory is one that Dirk won’t want to be doing again any time soon. It’s not that the landscape isn’t beautiful—once they’re off the interstate, it’s birches and evergreens covering steep, gravelly slopes, all of it snow-covered the moment they get high enough. But it’s a long drive, and right now he’s not in the mood to sit still for hours.

They’re about two hours in when he tells Farah about the kiss.

“Right,” Farah just says, throws him the briefest of glances before she focuses back on the road. “So was it—you kissing Todd, or Todd kissing you?”

“Todd kissing me. Well. Me kissing Todd. Well.” He exhales, tries to sort his thoughts. It’s really hard to focus on anything other than the cat that’s curled up in his lap. She’s beginning to feel more important by the minute. “I kissed Todd, but that was a while ago. I didn’t think he liked it, because his reaction, well, it wasn’t favourable. But then he kissed me today.” Dirk squeezes his eyes shut, rubs his forehead. This close to the end of a case, he always feels two seconds away from a migraine. “We had a fight right after.”

“So I take it the kiss didn’t go too well?”

“No. Well.” He shakes his head. “There was a third kiss. A mutual one. That one was really nice, but it’s also what gave Todd the attack.”

“I see.” Farah purses her lips, looks like she’s trying to think of how to put whatever she wants to say. “If you feel responsible for that, you should try not to. The same thing happened to me.”

“The same thing—” Oooh. Oh no. Dirk sits up. “Shit. Shit, Farah, I’m so sorry. You and Todd had made out, hadn’t you? Shit, I didn’t mean—I’m so sorry, I hadn’t even thought of that—”

“It’s fine.” Farah laughs, holds up one hand. It’s a bit awkward, but Dirk hopes that may just be because Farah is generally a bit of an awkward person. She puts both hands back on the steering wheel. “We did make out. I think—” She frowns, wets her lips. “I like Todd. He’s a nice guy with a lot of good qualities. But I think he enjoyed it more than I did.”

“You didn’t enjoy it, then?” Dirk tries to imagine that, not enjoying kissing Todd. He can’t quite do it.

Farah shrugs. “It was fine,” she says. “It wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t as good for me as I thought it was for him.” She glances over. “That’s awkward, you know? You end up pretending to like it more than you do so you won’t hurt the other one’s feelings, and it’s—it’s best not to let that sort of thing go too far.”

Dirk eyes her, wonders if she’s speaking from experience. That seems like a horridly personal question to ask, though, so he just clears his throat. “Yes. Well. I’m glad I didn’t hurt _your_ feelings. Though if you ever change your mind, I’m not opposed to sharing.”

He doesn’t think it a completely outlandish thing to say, but by the way Farah splutters and jerks on the wheel, she’s of a different opinion. Dirk lets out a startled yell and grabs the door as the tires buzz over the shoulder. “Farah!”

“Sorry!” She gets the car back under control, throws him a wide-eyed glance. “What the hell, Dirk? You’re not opposed to sharing?”

“Well … no.” He realizes it’s not how most people feel, but he didn’t think it justified quite so violent a reaction. “I know I’m meant to be jealous, but, well. I always figure, the more the merrier, right?”

Farah’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Eventually, she laughs. “Oh, man. Todd is going to have his hands full with you.”

Dirk’s not sure how to respond to that, so he doesn’t.

Farah frowns as she collects herself. “What I was getting at earlier is that I think those attacks are just something that’s going to happen if you’re dating Todd. They’re going to happen if you’re friends with Todd, too. There’s no fixing it, or—taking the blame. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s a disease. It needs management, not correction.”

Dirk chews on his lip, stares out the window at the trees rushing by. The cat absentmindedly kneads his leg. “Very few things in my life happen without meaning or purpose,” he says. “Especially huge coincidences like that. I suppose I find it difficult to believe that Todd falling ill just happened.”

“Welcome to everybody else’s life.”

She’s not mean about it. In fact, her tone sounds unusually gentle. Dirk still doesn’t like the idea of having to accept the ridiculous coincidence of Todd’s pararibulitis onset as being just that, especially not right now, when he’s wired with feeling on the cusp of untangling this current Gordian Knot of seemingly random happenstance.

Agitated, he scratches the cat in the wrong spot on the side of her belly, and jumps a mile when she slaps his hand. “Ow!”

“Don’t antagonize her.”

“She’s antagonizing me.” He glares at her. “How about you tell me what’s so important about you? It’d be rather convenient to know, considering we are literally driving into the dragon’s den right now.”

The cat settles down, licks her paw, and continues to ignore Dirk’s distress.

\------

They park the car about a mile down the road from the factory gate. As he’s about to get out, Farah takes his shoulder.

“Here,” she says, holds something out for him to take. Dirk’s already reaching for it when he realizes it’s a gun. With a yelp, he snatches his hand back.

“Calm down. It’s just a snub nose .38 special.” She says it like that means something to him. “And I don’t want you to do anything with it unless you absolutely have to. Which you won’t, because I’ll be there. But we are walking into an unpredictable situation with even more unpredictable hostiles. You are going to need a weapon.”

“It’s a dragon, Farah.” Delicately, Dirk takes the gun from her. “Shouldn’t you be giving me a sword?”

“A dragon absolutely sounds like a long-range kind of target to me.” She eyes him. “Do you know how to use that?”

“Not even a little bit.”

She gives him a quick run-down, as well as some extra ammunition in case he needs to reload. The gun weighs one side of his jacket down and gives him an awkward, lop-sided look. He decides he’s not a fan.

When they finally get out of the car, the cat jumps down onto the road and trots ahead up the mountain. Dirk gestures to Farah that they should follow.

“So do we have a plan?” He glances around, tries to make anything out between the dark trees. It was only yesterday that he and Todd were running down this road being chased by a creature that shouldn’t exist. He’s probably certifiable for coming back here of his own volition.

Farah’s two steps ahead of him. She’s got her gun in a shoulder holster, and a backpack with a range of things Dirk doesn’t want to know any details about. At least they’re probably not going to get arrested. There are no cops this far out, and if the factory didn’t call the police on them yesterday, he can’t imagine they will today.

“You said they have a lobby, right?”

“Yes. I still don’t know what they use it for—although if they make and sell medication, they probably use it to impress clients.” Makes sense. Another mystery solved.

Farah nods. “Anyway, I figured I can present myself as a security professional offering facility services. I’ll claim to have an appointment with the head of building security. That might at least get me past the reception desk.”

“Good plan!” Dirk purses his lips. “What am I going to present myself as?”

“You obviously can’t come in.” Farah sounds surprised that he’d even suggest it. “You completely wrecked their factory floor yesterday, and then they sicced their dragon on you. They know who you are.”

He hadn’t even considered that. He stops, a bad feeling curling in his stomach. “I don’t think you should go in there on your own.”

Farah stops as well. She laughs a little. “How did you think this would go? They shot at you, Dirk. You saw their _dragon_. You walk in there, they might just put a bullet in your head.”

He grimaces at the mental image. “They might put a bullet in your head, too, Farah. Or—use you as dragon lunch. You shouldn’t go in there on your own.” He squints. “What exactly are you planning to do, anyway, once you’re past the reception desk?”

“Reconnaissance.” Farah counts on her fingers. “One, I want to know what exactly they’re making in there. Ideally, I’ll be able to swipe some samples for analysis. I’ll also keep my phone recording. Two, I want to know if they’re keeping anything weird besides a dragon, three, I want to know how strong their security is. Four, I want to be able to assess their level of aggression, and, relatedly, five, I want to be able to assess their level of competence.” She pauses. “Though it’s probably quite low, considering they let you two get away.”

Dirk frowns, opens his mouth to protest, then reconsiders. “Fair enough.” He crosses his arms, tries to quell his anxiety. “And you think you’ll be able to do all that without antagonizing them into deciding they’d rather have you dead than alive?”

“I can take care of myself.” Farah crosses her arms, too. “I’m quite good at containing situations. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think I was up to the task.”

“I’m not doubting your competence.” He knows better than that. “I just—I have a very bad feeling about all of thi—”

A loud scream interrupts him. He startles, looks around to see who uttered it, and spots the cat. She’s sitting a few yards up the road, her tail swishing violently across the asphalt as she stares at them.

“Jesus. If she does that again, we can forget about a stealthy approach.” Farah frowns, puts her finger against her lips. “We need you to be quiet, please.”

At least he’s not the only one who’s talking to the cat. Looking at her creates a pull, like a magnet dragging him up the mountain. He starts walking again, his stomach twisting as he realizes how pointless any debate about doing this or not would be.

“Very well, then,” he mutters. It’s not really directed at Farah, but she seems to take it as an agreement anyway and starts walking again, too.

When they get close, Farah makes them climb down into the ditch rather than walk on the road. Once again, Dirk finds himself tromping through icy mud and snow, glad he chose a long-sleeve sweater this morning. Eventually, Farah holds up a fist. Dirk’s seen enough films to know that she means for him to stop.

“The gate’s just up there,” she says quietly. “I’d like you to stay here and observe the entrance. Do not interfere unless something goes extremely sideways.” She points at a couple of bushes at the top of the ditch. “You can hide behind those. You’ll be able to see the building from there.”

It sounds like a good plan. It may not be what’s meant to happen, but perhaps just this once, the universe will see reason. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

Farah climbs back up to the road and disappears out of sight. Dirk glances at the bushes at the top of the ditch, then down at the cat, who’s sitting in front of him in the snow and staring at him with reproach in her eyes.

“They have a dragon,” he says in his defence. “I’m holistic, not unkillable.”

Though he does have speed-healing now. The thought gives him a modicum of comfort as he climbs up the ditch and crouches behind an especially dense cluster of branches.

Farah was right, he can overlook the entire forecourt of the factory building from here. As he watches Farah walk across it, he wonders where all the cars are. A factory this size in a location this remote should have a parking garage about as big as the plant itself, shouldn’t it?

He just hopes Farah thought of an explanation for why she’s arriving on foot. Knowing her, she probably did.

Farah disappears into the building, and then Dirk’s just sitting there. He’s beginning to realize how boring this is going to be, and considers texting Tina to ask how Todd is doing, when he spots something dashing towards the building.

It’s small, and fuzzy, and really quite fast. With a sinking feeling, Dirk realizes it’s the cat.

“Get back here!” he hisses through his teeth. The cat’s too far away to hear it, and probably wouldn’t have cared if she had.

He inches around the bush. “You are going to get Farah barbecued by a dragon, get _back here_!”

The cat’s about thirty feet from the revolving door when its panels start moving. They swing around and spill out several armed security guards. Gates in the walls next to the door open, allowing more guards to pass through. Their steps echo mechanically on the asphalt. They all have automatic rifles, and they’re all aiming them at the cat.

Jesus. These people must be really scared of cats.

“Hey!” He shouts it before he can think about what he’s doing. So much for staying hidden. He steps around the bush, hands up, heart fluttering in his chest. “That’s—my cat. Yes, absolutely. She’s mine. That’s why I don’t want you to shoot her. Please don’t?”

The guards look up. There’s about ten of them. With a swooping motion, their guns come up to aim at him.

“Ah!” He stumbles back. “Please don’t shoot!”

“Identify yourself!”

The voice echoes loudly between the mountains. Dirk swallows against a dry throat. “Um—” Oh, all right then. “I’m Dirk Gently! I’d just like to get my cat, please.”

A shot rings out. It’s deafening, triggers a high whistling in his ears. He can hear the bullet whizzing past his head.

“Shit!”

Adrenaline overwhelms him. With normal people, this is where their survival instinct would kick in. With him, it neutralizes the last of his resistance against the pressing intuition he’s been feeling since he got out of the car.

He ducks his head and starts running. More shots ring out, hurting his ears and probably leaving permanent hearing damage. None of them hit, though. Halfway he grabs the cat, scoops her up against his chest without slowing down.

“Get out of the way!”

Even he has to admit, it’s a ridiculous thing to shout at a man who’s aiming an automatic rifle at you. He’s still not getting shot, though. Perhaps his mindless charge is confusing the guard into forgetting to pull the trigger, or perhaps the universe has other plans than him getting shot today. He ducks his head, puts his shoulder forward, and rams it full-tilt into the guard’s chest.

The gun does go off now, the bullet going wild as the rifle flies out of the man’s hand. Dirk is too busy trying to regain his balance to pay attention to whether anyone’s getting hit. The guard he pushed is rolling over the asphalt, and Dirk only so manages to get his feet back under himself before he stumbles into the revolving door.

The cat in his arms struggles and screams, and he drops her onto the marble floor as soon as he’s through.

“Freeze!”

That’s another security guard. Dirk jerks his hands up. “Don’t shoot!”

“What the hell is going on?”

That’s Farah. She’s at the reception desk, looking like she was speaking to the reception lady. She’s standing with her back to the counter and staring at him across the room.

“I’m sorry, Farah,” he says, hands still up in the air. “I didn’t mean to—”

“She’s with him!” The security guards are pouring inside after him. One of them is pointing a gloved finger at Farah. Another grabs Dirk by the scruff of his neck.

“Ah!” Dirk ducks his head, doesn’t even have the time to berate himself for giving Farah up like an idiot. “Please don’t hurt me!”

There’s a feral yowl, and the sound of tearing fabric. It’s the cat, who’s decided to attack the security guard heading for Farah. Her claws leave deep tears in the fabric of the man’s trousers, who looks like he just found a new level of respect for the feline species.

“Holy shit!”

“Don’t move, or the reception lady gets it!”

Farah sounds more menacing than Dirk’s ever heard her. He looks up to see her having made her way behind the counter (probably with an action-hero-leap across it) and holding the reception lady in a chokehold with a gun to her temple.

He jumps. “Jesus, Farah!”

“Let him go, or I swear to God I’ll put a bullet in her head!”

His collar grows decidedly less tight when the security guard lets him go. He stumbles, flails his arms. “Okay, Farah, he has let me go! You can stand down.”

She takes her gun away from the woman’s head, sweeps the muzzle across the room. “Everyone, get outside. Close the doors. Right now!”

Dirk can hear heavy boots on marble as the security guards start to back off. He ducks his head, tries to stay out of Farah’s line of fire as he scurries across the lobby.

“What the _hell_ , Dirk?” Farah hisses as soon as he’s close enough. “What happened to keeping this situation contained?”

“I am really sorry, Farah. It was the cat, she—” He cuts himself off. Cowering next to the reception desk, he can overlook the lobby quite well. It’s currently emptying of security guards as the ones Farah’s pointing her gun at make their way out onto the forecourt. The doors leading to the factory floor are closed, and the winding staircase in the back is deserted, too.

There’s no sign of the cat anywhere.

His stomach turns itself upside down. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

“We’ve lost the cat.” Dirk straightens up, and the beet-red face of the reception lady catches his eyes. She looks absolutely terrified.

“We are so sorry, Miss.” He holds out his hands, throws Farah a pointed glance. “I promise, we don’t mean you any harm.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” Her voice is shaky, but Dirk has to compliment her ability to keep her wits under pressure. The last of the guards chooses this moment to clear the lobby, and Farah lets her go.

“Would you be so kind as to tell me if there are any exits out of the lobby beyond the doors and the staircase? Perhaps something small enough so a cat would fit through?”

The lady's eyes flit from Dirk to Farah. “You’re here to free them, aren’t you?” she asks. “You’re here to break the spell. Oh my God, we’re all going to die.”

“No—” Farah looks slightly contrite at the woman’s obvious terror, but she doesn’t lower her gun. “I was just bluffing. I wasn’t going to seriously harm—oh my God!”

The woman lets out an ear-rending scream. She throws her head back, her throat working as a sound emerges that can’t possibly be human. Dirk joins in with a scream of his own, slaps his hands over his ears and stumbles back, just in time to make space for Farah, who’s leaped back over the counter. She jerks her gun around, points it at the screaming woman.

“Desist immediately!”

There’s no chance she can make herself heard over the noise. It sounds like an industrial sawmill gone wrong, like a dentist’s drill being played over a heavy metal band’s speaker system.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the receptionist begins to change before their eyes.

At first, Dirk thinks it’s a hallucination induced by the awful racket that she’s making—a shimmer of red spreading over her hands and face, like someone turned a light on inside of her. But when the glow seems to manifest into a pattern, fiery red, black and white spreading like flames over her body, he realizes it must be real.

“Farah, run!”

He grabs her shoulder, just in time to mess up her aim for the shot she’s decided to fire. The bullet shatters a neon tube on the wall behind the counter, a rain of sparks providing a backdrop for the transformation. Reception lady’s face morphs into a snout. The corners of her mouth pull back to form a strong jaw fitted with gleaming fangs.

Dirk really doesn’t want to see any more. “Come _on_!”

They book it right across the lobby. The staircase seems inevitably alluring, and Dirk decides there’s no time to try and fight his intuitions any more. He takes it two steps at a time. About halfway up, Farah turns back.

“Oh my God, Dirk, look!”

He throws a glance over his shoulder. The scene in the lobby almost makes him trip over his feet.

The entity behind the reception desk has completed her transformation. The normal-enough-looking reception lady from earlier is gone. In her place, there’s a lanky lizard beast, six feet of red, black, and white scales crouched on hind legs equipped with razor-sharp claws. A long tail curls on the floor, lined with spikey fins that run all the way up the spine to the long, narrow head. She—or it, or whatever—is still emitting screams, regular short bursts of noise directed at the other ones of her kind.

There are quite a few other ones of her kind.

The doors to the factory floor have opened to emit a horde of lizard-like dragons into the lobby. Unlike the reception lady, they’re entirely black, leaping on all fours towards the exits. The security guards, Dirk realizes as he sees more beasts milling about outside. Each one of the security guards is actually a dragon-lizard, and they’re all high-tailing it out of here like rats off a sinking ship.

“Farah?” His knees feel weak. He leans heavily on the banister. “Farah, what’s going on?”

“We can’t stay here.”

Dirk agrees. He’s never agreed with anything more, but moving seems like a foreign concept. Farah just grabs him by the arm, though, pulls him further up the stairs. After a couple of steps, he remembers how to walk without guidance.

“Are they all dragons?” His voice snags in his throat. He claws at the snatches of intuition flitting around in his mind, tries to put them together to a coherent whole and fails. “Even the scientists, are the scientists dragons, too?”

“I have no fucking clue, Dirk. In here!”

They’ve reached the top of the staircase, a landing with a single door that’s standing slightly ajar. Farah shoves it open to reveal a corridor, long and narrow and panelled in white. She shoos him in, pulls the door shut behind.

Dirk stumbles against the wall. “I have no idea what’s going on.” His heart is racing. “I thought I was close to solving this case, but clearly I’m not. We are probably going to die.”

“We’re not going to die.” Farah still has her gun, bless her. She’s holding it with the barrel pointing at the ceiling as her eyes flit from right to left. “All security personnel just abandoned their posts. At this moment, the facility is unprotected. This might be the best chance we’re going to get.”

Dirk can’t believe what he’s hearing. “To do what?”

“Find out what’s going on!” She fixes him with a stare. “Come on.”

She leads the way down the corridor. With a groan, Dirk pushes off the wall and follows.

They haven’t come very far when there’s a clacking of claws on the floor. Out of the frame of a wide double door steps none other than the cat.

The sight of her does more to calm Dirk down than anything Farah could say. It’s unreasonable, of course—she’s just a cat, it’s not like she can do anything to protect them. But she feels so inevitably right that the flutter of Dirk’s heart immediately settles.

“There you are.”

The cat answers with a meow and rubs her cheek on the doorframe.

Dirk throws Farah a glance. “I think she wants us to go inside.”

“Do you know what’s behind this door?”

Dirk can’t say he does, but— “A clue?” 

Farah rolls her eyes. “I cover, you enter.”

Apparently, what that means is that she’s going to point her gun at him while he opens the door. He puts his hand on the door knob, shuffles sideways to stay out of her line of fire.

“Just open the door, Dirk, I’m not going to shoot you.”

He bites his lip, plucks up his courage. The cat meows her impatience.

“Here goes.”

The door swings open.

It’s a large room, at least half the floor space of the factory. The ceiling is very high and made of glass, admitting bright winter sunlight that reflects off of a shiny marble floor. To Dirk’s left, there’s a whole technical set-up, beeping computers and monitors showing graphs and lists and stock market statistics.

To Dirk’s right, there’s a voice. “What the hell is going on?”

It’s the voice of a man who’s used to getting what he wants. He shouldn’t be able to see Dirk around the open door, though—and he probably hasn’t. He’s most likely referring to the cat, who’s trotted past Dirk right into the centre of the office.

“I am going to kill that cat,” mutters Farah behind him.

“We have a breach. We have a goddamn breach!”

The man sounds angry. A loud alarm starts whooping, makes Dirk duck his head.

The cat seems unbothered, just sits down and settles her tail over her paws.

“Who’s out there?”

There’s really no way around it, so Dirk takes a deep breath, steps forward. “Hello,” he says—or really more shouts, to make himself heard over the alarm. “We’d like to avoid any shooting, if at all possible.”

“Who the hell are you?”

The speaker is a tall man in his forties wearing a dark, sleek business suit and tie. He’s standing behind a nice, expensive-looking desk, across from him none other than Oswald and Chester in a couple of expensive-looking visitor chairs. Next to the desk on the right, boxes of stolen luxury goods are stacked about four feet high.

Dirk barely notices any of that, though. His eyes are drawn to an object left of the desk. It’s an ornate, hip-high pedestal. On it sits a glass cylinder about the size of a Campbell’s soup can. It contains something that’s hard to see from all the way across the room—all Dirk can make out is a shiny, turquoise glow.

It’s very important. It may be the most important thing he has ever laid eyes on.

He starts walking. The cat makes a pleased sound and falls into step beside him. Once again it’s like being pulled by a magnet, like his feet are not quite his own—

Someone steps in his path, grabs the front of his shirt.

“Hey!”

He stumbles, flails.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

It’s Chester. Dirk blinks, tries to get his feet back under him. “I’m—”

“It’s you!” The words are full of rage. Tall Man comes around his desk. Dirk figures he must be the infamous Mr. Boyd. “You and your friend, you’re the ones who wrecked yesterday’s shipment!”

“We really didn’t mean to!” Dirk holds up his hands, stumbles again as Chester yanks on his shirt. He slaps at Chester’s grip. “Let me go! We didn’t mean to break anything, we just wanted to have a look around.”

“Your look around cost me three hundred thousand dollars.” Boyd’s still advancing, and Dirk’s beginning to get a bad feeling about this.

“You’re a menace,” Chester hisses, shakes him. “You tried to steal our merchandise!”

“I didn’t! I swear, I wasn’t going to, I was just—”

“Let him go.”

Farah. Dirk can’t see her, but the tone of her voice is enough for him to know that she’s pointing her gun at them. Chester lets him go. He stumbles back, a hand going up to his throat.

“Who are _you_?” Boyd sounds genuinely confused. Behind him, Oswald finally gets to his feet as well, his movements slow and deliberate. “And where the hell is security?”

“Security’s not coming.” Farah moves her gun over to Oswald, gives him a nod. “How about you turn the alarm off?”

Oswald waits for a gesture from his boss, but when it comes, he flicks a switch on the desk. The sirens stop. “What have you done to security?” he asks.

“Nothing.” Dirk’s voice comes out a bit squeaky. He clears his throat. “They left. All of them. You have no security left at all, so you should—you should do what Farah says.”

“Goddamn drakes.” Boyd doesn’t even sound surprised. “Chester, deal with the breach.”

Farah’s gun is still pointing, but Chester seems well-trained to follow his boss’ orders. He starts to move towards the cat, who immediately backs off with a hiss.

Chester growls. “Get over here!”

Dirk feels a terrible twisty feeling in his stomach. “Farah, make him stop.” 

Luckily, Farah doesn’t question him. “Stop right there, pal.” She levels her gun at him.

Chester does, throws an uncertain glance at his boss. Boyd looks from Farah to Dirk. “Who the hell are you people?” He seems beyond confused. “What do you want?”

Farah says nothing, which makes sense. She doesn’t know why they’re here. If anyone knows that, it would be Dirk.

All Dirk knows, though, is that the shiny thing in the corner is important.

“I’m here for that,” he says, points at the pedestal. “You give me that, and you won’t see us again.”

“That?” Boyd’s voice grows cold as ice. The cat meows. “Do you even know what that is?”

Dirk swallows. “It’s a—thing?”

“What kind of a joke are you?” Boyd’s face pulls into a disdainful grimace. “Get the hell out of my plant, you—”

A pissed-off, feline battle cry interrupts him. The cat launches herself from her position next to Dirk’s feet and darts towards the pedestal. Chester swears, goes after her, but he’s taken no more than two steps before there’s a loud bang and a clatter as a bullet ricochets off of the marble floor in front of his feet. He stumbles to a startled halt, ducks his head as the bullet hits the wall with a thump.

“I said, stop right there, pal.”

Farah’s bought the cat all the time she needed. She jumps up on the pedestal. With a high-pitched chink, the glass cylinder tumbles to the floor. As it bursts in an explosion of glass, the shiny thing inside it hits the floor and shatters as well. A million sparkling pieces reflect the light in iridescent rays that dance across the walls and ceiling.

“Goddammit, no!”

Chester and his boss stumble back, hands coming up to protect themselves. From the corner of his eyes, Dirk catches a glimpse of Oswald’s face. He’s smiling from ear to ear. 

“ _Byddwch rhydd, ddraig goch_!”

“You’re _Welsh_?”

Dirk’s question gets drowned out by the sound of air, marble, and furniture getting violently displaced. He jerks his hands up to cover his eyes as a flash of bright light explodes in the corner. The pedestal topples over, smoke and sparks fly as a huge shape emerges from the glare.

“Oh, God.” Dirk stumbles as Farah grabs his arm and pulls him back to take cover behind the stacked boxes. “Not another dragon!”

It seems obvious now, looking back. When the smoke clears, the lines of the cat’s face are mirrored almost perfectly in the dragon’s snout. The massive tail swishes with the same kind of vexation as the cat’s did, her limbs move with the same kind of effortless grace. Red, leathery wings spread wide, and the dragon’s chest puffs out as she emits an ear-splitting roar.

_Free at last!_

Dirk feels the words more than he hears them, an echo in his head that comes with the same manic aftertaste as the hunches—it’s there, it’s right, and it’s absolutely inevitable. He lets out a startled yelp, claps his hands over his ears.

“Dirk!” Farah grabs his elbow. “Are you okay?”

“I—”

_Get down!_

That’s not really what he hears in his head. It’s more like a sudden certainty that he needs to get Farah out of the way. He grabs her around the waist, tackles her to the floor, just so manages to not be thrown off as she struggles. He covers as much of her body with his own as he can before he once again hears that sound that’s like water rushing, except not at all.

Bright, scorching heat sweeps over them. Every bare patch of Dirk’s skin starts burning as a jet of fire misses them by a mere couple of feet. The wall cracks as the flames sear a large black patch into it, leaving brittle mortar and the smell of burning rubber. Piercing through the mess of noise, Dirk can hear screams—high-pitched and shrill, two voices shrieking in agony. He presses his face into Farah’s jacket, doesn’t move until they stop.

The heat lets off, leaves a painful sting on the back of his hands and scalp. The smell of burning flesh fills the air, and Dirk quickly rolls off of Farah. He sits up, but really doesn’t want to get to his feet and look at what’s causing that smell.

Farah has no such qualms. She jumps to her feet, jerks her gun up. “Don’t think I won’t do it!”

“Farah!” He can still feel that presence in his mind, the dragon who was formerly a cat. She’s mildly confused right now, a little wary. He clambers to his feet, makes sure he’s facing away from whatever’s happened in the room behind him. “Farah, stop. We’re not in any danger.”

“There’s a great big dragon right there who just roasted two people alive!”

Dirk winces, takes a breath, and steels his shoulders. Finally, he turns around.

The dragon is crouching in the corner of the room, too large for the space despite the high ceiling. A path of scorched destruction leads from her feet to the wall behind Dirk and Farah, blackened floor tiles and furniture that’s burned to a crisp. Dirk carefully avoids looking at the two congealed lumps on the floor where Chester and Mr. Boyd were standing earlier. There are things he doesn’t need to know in detail.

Oswald seems to have gotten out of the way in time. He’s standing near the dragon, smiling a smile that seems decidedly too cheerful.

Dirk puts a hand on Farah’s arm, gently so as not to startle her into pulling the trigger. “I don’t think the gun’s needed anymore,” he says. “They’re not going to harm us.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because—”

“She speaks to him,” says Oswald in his lilting Welsh accent. “He is the dragon’s champion.”

Farah’s eyebrows shoot up. She looks around. “You are?”

Dirk squints at the dragon. “I am?”

The voice echoes in his head again, like a flood washing through his mind, bringing clarity and a headache that’ll probably last for days.

 _You are_ , the dragon says to him. He’s suddenly aware that her name is Rhoswen. _If you listen, I’ll explain._


	8. Chapter 8

Rhoswen does explain. She unleashes an explosion of knowledge in his mind, bright images and words and feelings, that buries his consciousness under an avalanche of impressions and makes his vision fizz out like an old-fashioned TV set.

When he comes around, a rough tongue is licking his forehead.

_You are very delicate._

He groans, pulls away. “Am not.”

“Dirk!”

“Farah.” His vision clears, and Farah’s concerned face comes into focus. “Where am I?”

“Still in the factory. You haven’t been out long, just a few minutes—”

“Undoubtedly a reaction brought on by stress,” says a voice that Dirk can’t place. The person speaking is a short, scrawny man with round spectacles and a lab coat. “Quite common, really, though traditionally more so among representatives of the Victorian era—”

“Who are you, then?” Whatever the answer to that question, Dirk’s gut is giving him signals of dislike. Farah’s not a fan, either, judging by the look she’s giving the man.

Dirk pushes his feet over the side of the sofa. They’re in a smaller room now, something of a lounge with comfy chairs and a decanter on a side table. Next to him on the sofa’s expensive leather cushions is Rhoswen, back in cat form and eying him with a neutral stare.

Dirk gives her a bit of an awkward wave. “Hello.”

“This is Dr Clearer,” says Farah, waves a hand at Spectacle Guy. “Oswald went to fetch him from the lab when you passed out. He’s a medical doctor.”

Oswald’s also still here, standing next to the door like an especially tall bouncer. He’s still wearing a hint of a smile.

Dirk gives Dr Clearer a nod. “Are you one of the scientists from the lab?”

“They’re not dragons,” says Farah.

“I know.” The room still hasn’t quite settled. Dirk’s head feels too full, and his vision keeps trying to slide inwards to scan the mess of new information swirling about in his mind. “None of the scientists are. They’ve all been kidnapped.”

“I normally work at the Center for Medical Sciences in Albany,” Dr Clearer provides, steeples his fingers. “I’m a medical researcher in the field of pain management, but I was taken several weeks ago and brought here to work on this project.” With his pressed-together index fingers, he pushes his spectacles up his nose. “Where is here, exactly?”

“Seattle,” Farah says before Dirk can answer. “More or less. What’s this you’re working on?”

“Oh, it’s really quite fascinating. We’re developing a non-opioid treatment scheme for post-surgery patients who suffer from a very specific subtype of a rare endocrinal disorder that—”

“I meant here, not in Albany.” Farah’s still holding her gun, and it looks like it’s taking all of her self-control not to point it at the doctor. “What are you working on _here_?”

“Right.” Dr Clearer clears his throat. “I have to say, we’re being given so little information that it’s really hard to say—”

“They’re working on a cure-all pill,” Dirk says. The knowledge is all right there in his head, but it’s like it’s encoded. He frowns, focuses. “They’re using—dragons. They’re using dragons?” He looks at Rhoswen, who makes a sound of confirmation.

_They took my –. They imprisoned her, and they’re using her – to make their poison._

Rhoswen uses two different words, but neither of them match anything Dirk could put an expression to. The first is a feeling of love, of inevitable togetherness, and sworn, incessant loyalty. A sister, maybe, or a lover.

The second is an essence, a nourishment, a product. It’s also magic.

Dirk wets his lips, cards his fingers through his hair. “Apparently, dragons produce—something. Like bees make honey, except it’s magic, or—something. It’s being used as a base for the pill. They kidnapped her—I don’t know, friend. They’re forcing her to produce this stuff.”

“Okay.” Farah finally holsters her gun. She steps over, puts a hand on his arm. “Dirk, are you okay?”

“What?”

“You’re being a bit—Rain Man. How do you know all this?”

“I—” Right. Farah can’t hear Rhoswen. “The dragon is speaking to me. In my head, she’s telling me things.”

“She’s telling you things in your head.”

“Yes. We—” The image of a corridor manifests in his mind, damp and dark with walls cut from raw stone. “We have to get her out of there.”

“We have to get who out of where?”

There’s no time. Dirk gets to his feet, follows Rhoswen as she jumps to the floor and heads for the door. “Just get the scientists out,” he tells Farah. “Call the police, or something. I’ll take care of this.”

“Dirk—”

“I will assist,” says Oswald and steps forward, gives Farah a nod. “You don’t have to be concerned.”

“I’m not sure I trust you. How do you fit into this, anyway?”

Dirk scrutinizes Oswald’s face, the deep-set eyes under a bulging brow, the receding chin, and the bulging mound of his shoulders. In his eyes a glint of … orange?

He gasps. “Oh my God. You’re the dragon who chased us!”

Farah’s gun comes up. Her lips pull back from her teeth. “Don’t move!”

Oswald seems less than concerned. The way he raises his hands is more placating than anything. “I’m sorry I scared you.” He looks at Dirk. “The drakes would have killed you, so I said I would go after you instead. I was trying to protect you.” He tilts his head, squints. “You seem to need a lot of protecting.”

“That’s not—” Dirk looks at Farah, who’s weighing her head in agreement. “Okay, fine, perhaps that is true. But nobody’s ever tried to do so by breathing fire at me.”

Before anyone can answer, the cat—Rhoswen—emits a loud scream, demonstrates her impatience by scratching at the door. Dirk holds a hand out at Farah. “I think we can trust him,” he says. “He has saved me twice, if you really want to count the second time, and—” He frowns, tries to put words to the concept he’s feeling in his head. “I think he’s Rhoswen’s cousin?”

“Who’s Rhoswen?”

“The cat. I mean, the dragon. Her.”

He points, and Farah’s eyes widen. She throws up her hands, holsters her gun. “Fine. Fine. If we’re operating on need-to-know, I can work with that. Do not hold me responsible if anything happens that I’d have had to have known about to prevent it, though.” She winces. “Do you still have the gun I gave you?”

Does he? Dirk had forgotten about it. But it’s still there, weighing down the right side of his jacket like a brick. “I do.”

“All right. So I get the scientists out, and you—do whatever it is that needs doing.” She chews on her lip, puts her hands on her hips. “Meet you at the car, then?”

“We will bring the champion home,” Oswald says, and Rhoswen utters another impatient meow.

Dirk glances from Oswald to Farah, shrugs. “I suppose I’ll see you at the agency.”

Farah seems less than thrilled, but doesn’t protest any further. “Take care of yourself.”

“You, too.”

Oswald opens the door, and Rhoswen darts through it. She’s down the corridor like a flash, leaving Dirk and Oswald to catch up.

“Why is she a cat?” Dirk asks Oswald, gasping for breath as they come to a halt in front of a lift. Oswald presses the button. “You’re a person, and the reception lady was a person, why isn’t Rhoswen?”

“She’s _ddraig goch_ ,” Oswald says, as if that explains anything. Dirk shrugs in confusion, and Rhoswen paws at his leg.

_There are many kinds of dragons_ , she says. _The one you call reception lady was a drake. Oswald is ddraig du, a black dragon. I and Eirlys are ddraig goch, red dragons. Not all of us take human form._

“Are you all from Wales?”

_Not the drakes_. The lift arrives with the chime of a bell, and Rhoswen leads the way inside. _Drakes fear the Welsh dragon._

“That’s why they ran, isn’t it?” Dirk watches as Oswald puts his finger against a keyhole underneath the lift’s buttons. There’s an orange glow, and the smell of burning wires. The lift jerks once and sets itself into motion. “When the lady at the reception realized we were here to break you out, she called on all the drakes to leave their posts.”

Rhoswen emits a feeling somewhere between smugness and disdain. _Cowards._

“Drakes are easily bought and just as easily lost,” says Oswald. “Mr. Boyd had no trouble enlisting their help, but he did not realize that the help of a drake is worse than sabotage by an enemy spy.”

_He did not realize a lot of things_. Rhoswen’s whiskers vibrate as she huffs a breath out of her nose. Dirk thinks he sees a couple of sparks fly. He remembers the blast of heat that ended Mr. Boyd, and shifts his feet in discomfort.

“Where are we going now?”

The telepathic vibe he’s receiving from Rhoswen brims with fervour as she responds. _To end this injustice_ , she says. The lift chimes, and the doors slide open. She steps outside. _To free Eirlys._

\------

By the time they get where they seem to be going, they’re deep underground. Dirk assumes they must be right inside the mountain. The walls of the corridors are cold, jagged stone, and equipped with real, burning torches at regular intervals. Now and again, large caves formed by either lava or earthquakes interrupt the hallways.

It’s in one of those caves that Rhoswen stops and, without any warning, changes back into a dragon. Dirk ducks his head, shields himself from the explosion of light and sound with raised hands. “Jesus!”

Rhoswen stretches long, scaly limbs, her tail swishing from one side to the other. _This is it_.

“This is what?”

“Look over there. It’s what we brought you here for.”

Oswald points over at a wall. There, embedded in the stone, is something that looks like an oversized digital dial, four screens that show a blur of changing images. Underneath are four buttons, each adorned with a different symbol. Next to it, there’s a large gate hewn into the stone.

It’s a puzzle lock. Hit the button just when its symbol flashes on the screen. Get all four, and the door will open.

Dirk takes a step back. “I’m not doing that.”

The roar in his mind is furious, accompanied by a booming growl that Rhoswen emits out loud. _You are the dragon’s champion!_

He ducks his head, claps his hands over his ears even though it doesn’t help at all. “These things don’t work for me!” In the back of his head, he hears the clanging of the alarm at Blackwing— _wrong, wrong, wrong_ , every time without fail. “I’m not psychic! I don’t know how to solve puzzles like that.”

A massive head swings around. Hot breath ghosts over his cheeks as Rhoswen suspends her large face mere inches from his own. The teeth peeking out from under her lips are longer than Dirk’s fingers.

_You are a creature of fate, Dirk Gently_. The voice echoes in his head, makes his twisting stomach crawl up into his throat. _Fate will allow you to prevail, like it always does._

“Does it always do that, though?”

The roar she emits is only in his head, but it still makes him stumble back, makes him clutch at his ears in terror. If she’d done it out loud, he’d probably have been roasted alive. “Okay!” He flails his arms, regains his balance. “Okay, I’ll try. But honestly, this is exactly the kind of thing I am always terrible at. If I mess it up, you have to believe me that I’m not doing it on purpose.”

The presence in his mind doesn’t seem particularly inclined to be lenient about failure. He swallows against a dry throat, throws a glance at Oswald. He’s just standing there, though. No help to be expected from that corner.

One foot in front of the other, Dirk makes his way across the cave, his steps echoing off the stone that surrounds them. The wall with the screens is covered in a thin, wet film of moisture, just like the floor. He stares at one of them, tries to make out the pictures that are flashing past.

“I don’t even know if these are the symbols on the buttons,” he says. His voice sounds thin even to his own ears. “I can’t make anything out at all. What if it’s a trap?”

Rhoswen just growls in his head. Oswald steps up next to him, his arms crossed. He looks like he’s slowly losing his patience, too. “This is why you are here,” he says. “Dragons are powerful creatures of magic. Mere locks cannot hold us. This riddle was designed to be unbreakable by creatures of chance and chaos. You are neither. Focus, and you will succeed.”

_Next you’ll tell me to try harder_ , Dirk thinks but doesn’t say. He returns his attention to the screens in front of him, ignores the way his throat seems to be trying to cut off his air supply.

This is a case. It’s a case, it’s not a Blackwing lab experiment. There’s a point to this, it’s not a random set of symbols that mean nothing to anyone. Perhaps the hunches will work for this one. Perhaps just _once_ , he’ll manage to solve the stupid symbol matching game.

He raises a hand, notices that it’s trembling, and curls it to a fist. _Focus_.

The four symbols are all aptly themed. One’s a triangle with three lines that run from the corners and meet in the middle—a simplistic dragon’s head. The next is a dragon whose tail twists into a Celtic symbol, the third a smiling serpent whose body forms a circle. The fourth is a Chinese character that Dirk can’t read, but he’d wager a pretty confident guess as to its meaning.

He turns his attention inwards, listens. He can feel his pulse in his throat, his chest still too tight to allow him to sense anything beyond the way it’s clenching around his lungs. He closes his eyes, tightens his jaw.

_Come on._

He’s just about to reach for the triangular dragon’s head, unsure if it’s a hunch or just wishful thinking, when Oswald’s voice startles him.

“Our patience is not without limit, Dirk Gently.”

His hand slips, and he hits the Celtic dragon by accident. “Shit!”

He ducks his head, waits for the inevitable punishment—an electric shock, a blaring alarm, or perhaps a bullet from some hidden, self-firing rifle—when Rhoswen’s voice echoes in his head.

_Well done. Keep going._

He blinks, squints at the screen. The first one’s stopped on a symbol that matches the Celtic dragon on the button he just pressed.

Well. One down, three to go.

“Right,” he mutters, out of breath even though he’s just standing there. “Right, come on. You can do this.”

Three screens, three symbols, so his chances of hitting the right one have increased to thirty-three percent. It gives him confidence, and he reaches for the dragon’s head with more determination.

The moment he touches it, a searing pain shoots up his arm. “Ow!” He snatches his hand back, whimpers as he cradles it against his chest. “Ow, what the—”

The button glows red-hot, the white areas turning orange. He can feel the heat it’s suddenly emitting even from where he stands.

_Wrong_ , says Rhoswen in his head.

Dirk feels not a little like kicking her against her scaly dragon shin. “Yes, thank you. I noticed.”

_Keep going._

Dirk bites his lip, sniffs against a suddenly clogged nose. His fingers are burning, blisters forming as he watches. It really hurts, he wants to say, but it’s not his experience that these sort of tests get interrupted due to a little bit of discomfort on his part.

“I really don’t know what I’m doing,” he says instead. “What if the next one just sets me on fire?”

Rhoswen growls her displeasure in the back of his head, and Oswald steps closer. “You are fighting your own nature. Why?”

“I’m not fighting anything!” His voice cracks, and he clenches his teeth as the burning in his fingers brings tears to his eyes. “I am not psychic! I am not made to solve random puzzles! Why would I know what symbol combination some crazy business mogul with a foible for dragons programmed into his secret dragon lair lock? That’s not my nature, that’s just—bullshit!”

Rhoswen opens her jaw, presents an arsenal of sharp teeth and a pointed, split tongue as she bellows a roar of rage in his direction. Her breath is hot, singes the tips of his hair and causes an unpleasant burning smell.

Oswald’s skin starts shifting and rippling, a shimmer of black scales peeking through here and there. “Fulfil your destiny,” he growls. Dirk can hear the dragon in his voice, a deep, echo-y rumbling stemming from a much larger creature than any human. “We are done waiting.”

“Fine.” Dirk sniffs, swallows. Seems like his choices are being burned alive by an impatient dragon versus being burned alive by a stupid symbol matching game. Either one is an aptly pointless ending for the kind of life he’s lived. “Fine, don’t listen to me. Nobody ever does. I’ll just randomly press some buttons, then, shall I?”

He turns around, stares at the three rapidly changing screens, the four buttons underneath. Screw percentages. Who says that each symbol can be used only once?

“For the record, I’ve always hated math.” He reaches out, punches the Celtic dragon button three times in a row. He squeezes his eyes shut, expects the inevitable feeling of flames engulfing him, setting his body on fire and making him scream until his heart gives out under the strain. Goddammit. If he absolutely had to die, he would’ve wished for a less gruesome end than this.

Instead of the screams of a fiery death, though, he hears the crunching sound of stone grinding on stone. He blinks his eyes open, looks over at the gate. The massive stone plate of the prison gate is moving up, revealing a steadily increasing gap. His eyes wander over to the screens.

All four of them are showing the Celtic dragon, wings spread out and tail curled into a circular symbol underneath. The buttons emit a greenish glow, the glow of a positive PIN confirmation.

“I did it!”

_Eirlys!_

Rhowen’s voice in his head is loud enough to send him staggering against the wall. He holds on for balance, turns around to see a metric ton of Welsh dragon launch herself at the moving plate of solid rock.

“Careful! You’ll break the mechanism.”

Whoever built this lair seems to have taken this risk into consideration, though. The gate withstands the onslaught. It’s almost physically painful to watch Rhowen’s impatience as she claws and scratches at the stone. The moment the gate has risen far enough to allow her to pass, she does.

Dirk glances at Oswald, who seems to have decided to stay in his human form, after all.

“Should we follow?”

“I believe that is expected, yes.”

Unlike the cave, the area behind the gate is shrouded in darkness, so Dirk grabs a torch from one of the wall brackets next to the gate. He winces as he momentarily forgets his burned fingers, and switches the torch to his other hand.

Oswald’s already heading in. Behind the gate, their steps echo in a way that indicates an even higher ceiling. Dirk squints, holds his torch up to illuminate as big an area as possible.

_Eirlys!_ He can hear Rhoswen in his head, full of joy and concern. _Eirlys, what have they done to you?_

Finally, he and Oswald turn a corner. The only source of light is Dirk’s torch, so it’s hard to make out details—except for the two dragons crouched against the back wall of the cave. Their eyes are like glowing rubies, their skin giving off a crimson shimmer that shifts and moves in the dark.

Eirlys is smaller than Rhoswen, the lines of her ribcage stark and visible. Her wings flutter as she makes a keening noise while Rhoswen’s snout explores every inch of her neck. Shackles circle her ankle, a chain leading off into the dark. At her feet, there’s a pile of clutter that Dirk can’t quite make out, not until he steps closer and recognizes a truly vast amount of phones, tablets, scarves, jackets, hats, gloves, and things that can be easily taken off of passer-bys, provided you have a sufficiently criminal inclination.

It’s the dragon’s hoard. The phone screens reflecting the light from the torch even make it look like a pile of gold.

There’s a wild chattering in his mind that’s too quick and mumbled to make out any details. He’s picking up on concern, though, pain and love and relief and a yearning for the safety of home. Suddenly, he’s thinking of Todd, sees in his mind the image of Todd in the hospital bed, looking small and ill and exhausted. Wonders how long it’s been since he left him there.

“Excuse me.” He says it too quietly first, has to clear his throat and take a step closer. “Excuse me, Rhoswen?”

The dragons’ heads swing around. Four glowing eyeballs fix on him.

He smiles a little, waves. “Um, hello. Eirlys, very good to meet you. Sorry about the—being captured thing, that—I’m sure that was very unpleasant.”

_Who is this?_

“I’m Dirk Gently. I am—well, normally I’m a holistic detective, but today I think I was primarily brought along to act as a key code decrypter.”

He can feel a vague note of impatience in his mind and quickly turns to Rhoswen. “Not to interrupt your reunion, but I do have a favour to ask of you, and—I’m not sure how much longer it can wait.”

_What do you need?_

“If I understand correctly, your kind possesses healing powers. That’s why I healed overnight every time you slept in my bed, and that’s why Mr. Boyd harnessed your powers to create his cure-all pill.”

He feels a flash of jealousy in his mind, strong enough to make him pull up his shoulders and duck his head. Rhoswen makes a chattering noise, licks Eirlys’ cheek, and the feeling dissipates.

_You understand correctly. What do you need?_

“Mr. Boyd’s pills have hurt people, two of my friends among them. I just—I’d be grateful if you could help them. The way you’ve helped me.” He clears his throat, looks from one glowing set of eyes to the other. Their serene expressions mirror the silence in his mind. “Please?”

_We don’t get involved in human matters._

“You—” This time when Dirk feels his throat grow tight, it’s because of fury rather than panic. He takes a deep breath, forces himself to keep from shouting. “I’ve risked my life multiple times for you. So has Farah, and so has Todd, by the way, one of the human matters you don’t want to get involved in. All I’m asking is—your help. Your help to make sure that _everyone_ can come out of this alive, sane, and healthy, not just you two—”

_Rhoswen will help._

That’s Eirlys. The surprise Dirk feels at the interruption is shared by Rhoswen, who turns her eyes on her companion. An exchange of wordless impression follows, too quick for Dirk to tell what exactly is being said. Eirlys unfolds one of her wings, settles it across Rhoswen’s back, and noses her snout against the side of Rhoswen’s neck.

Rhoswen lets out a small huff, sends a few sparks flying.

_I will help._ Her glowing stare wanders over to Oswald. _Take him and go ahead. I will meet you where I’ll need to be_. 

\------

They head up onto the roof of the factory building.

A wall of cold air hits Dirk as he follows Oswald out the door. He tucks his head between his shoulders, squints into what would probably be absolute darkness were it not for the truly breath-taking display of stars splashed across the sky.

“It’s beautiful,” he says, really more to himself than anyone else.

Oswald nods nonetheless. “It is. Stand back.”

Dirk doesn’t get what’s happening until the rippling glow across Oswald’s back spreads out to the sides to form the beginning of two massive wings. He stumbles back with a gasp, raises his hands to shield his eyes as Oswald’s transformation creates a blinding light brighter than any flood lamp.

When it settles, the dark mass that looms before him on the roof sends a shiver down his spine not mitigated by the fact that he knows that he’s not in any danger. Oswald is even larger than Rhoswen, darker than the night around him, and emits an ethereal glow from between his scales that makes him somewhat hard to look at. Dirk swallows, clears his throat.

“I do have to say, your kind is quite magnificent. What did you evolve from? Dinosaurs?”

_Sea serpents._

The echo in his head is even less like words than Rhoswen’s voice, just a looming sense of an enormous, black serpent living among algae and angler fish at the bottom of a prehistoric sea. Perfect. He’s never getting that nightmare image out of his head.

“Right,” he says, rubs his hands together for warmth and winces as his burned fingers protest. “So, what’s the plan? Why are we up here?”

_You want to see your friend, right?_

Oswald’s transmission is a sense of worry, an urge to protect and comfort. It reverberates with the concern that’s sitting in the pit of Dirk’s stomach, grows into an overwhelming need to get back to Seattle right now.

He doesn’t even need to say anything. Oswald just spreads his wings, bows one leg and curls his tail to create a step.

Dirk takes a moment to get it. “That’s a terrible idea,” he says as soon as he does. “I’m already freezing. I’d rather not solidify into a popsicle taking a midnight ride on the back of a dragon in the middle of November.”

Mirth echoes through his mind, and the image of fire, an internal flame cocooned in a massive chest cavern. Dirk wets his lips, takes a step closer and puts a careful hand against the dragon’s side.

It’s like touching a rock warmed by the sun. He immediately moves closer, can’t help a small, delighted laugh. “That’s incredible.”

Oswald uses the tip of his wing to nudge him along. It’s probably meant to be gentle. Dirk still stumbles face-first into the dragon’s side. “All right, all right.”

He clambers onto the scaly back, using warm ridges and fins as handholds. The dragon’s skin feels like soft leather, like an unbelievably comfortable sofa with in-built seat heating. Dirk settles between the wings, tucks his legs firmly behind them and laughs.

“Between the two of us, I’m quite sure both Farah and Todd will be upset to have missed this.”

He keeps smiling right up until Oswald spreads his wings. He beats them in a sharp, jerky movement that make his entire body undulate. Dirk grabs hold of a ridge with each hand, lets out a scream. “Please don’t drop me!”

They push off the factory roof at a higher speed than Dirk would’ve thought possible. Cold air rushes in his face, makes it hard to keep his head up, so he doesn’t. Cheek pressed against warm, leathery dragon skin, Dirk watches the factory building fall away from underneath them. It’s not long before it’s swallowed by darkness.

_Still no worse than passing through an interdimensional water tunnel with a bullet in your leg_ , he thinks as he clings to the back of the dragon and hopes that Oswald won’t see any reason to do a barrel roll.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last one! Thanks for reading along, I hope you had fun. <3

The upside of traveling by self-heating dragon is that it’s quite speedy, if never not terrifying. The downside is that as soon as they get close enough to Seattle for the cloud cover to become insufficient, Oswald takes them down in a nature protection area, turns back into a person, and starts hiking towards the nearest bus stop.

They reach it just as the sun starts creeping over the horizon. Dirk’s only consolation is that it wouldn’t have helped them to get there any earlier. The buses don’t start running until seven.

The big city bus vibrates as it hurtles down the Interstate, passing the morning traffic in the less crowded bus lane. Dirk nods off several times, once deeply enough to sink against Oswald’s meaty shoulder. His phone buzzing jerks him awake and reminds him to respect personal boundaries.

The gadget’s small screen shows a disquieting number of message notifications. Seems like he was out of network range up in the mountains. Fifteen of them are from Tina, who apparently got his new number from Farah.

He doesn’t read them all, instead just calls her. She all but squeals when she hears his voice, except not really, because she’s still at the hospital and trying not to get kicked out for being too noisy. He fails to get a word in, and eventually just snaps her name. “Tina!”

“Yes. Yes, that’s me. What’s up?”

Dirk swallows, tries to ignore the twisting in his stomach. “How’s Todd?”

Tina gives off a high-pitched keen of doubt. “Honestly, man, like, I don’t wanna worry you, but Todd Brotzman’s been better, if you know what I’m saying.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying, actually.” He rests his temple against the window and swallows past the lump in his throat. “Are you saying he’s worse?”

“Well, I don’t know what he was like when you brought him in.” Dirk’s about to lose his patience, but before he can say anything, Tina lets out a sharp sigh. “They gave him a massive shit-ton of drugs, dude. Like, normally I’d be like, lucky him, but in this case, I dunno. He doesn’t seem to be having a good time with them.”

“Is he still in pain?”

“I don’t know. He’s mostly, like, spacing out?”

Dirk chews on his lip. “Help is on the way,” he says, hoping that it’s actually true. Rhoswen said she’d help, but he’s not sure how much of a priority Todd is in her mind. “I’ve solved the case, and—there’s someone who can help Todd.”

“Right.” There’s a small quiver in Tina’s voice. “Hobbs, too?”

“Of course. Yes. Hobbs, too.” Dirk throws a glance at Oswald, who’s sitting there looking as serene as a stone statue. He hasn’t actually asked the dragons about Hobbs. He hopes they’re feeling amenable. “I’ll see you in a bit. All right, Tina?”

“Right, okay. See you in a bit.”

\------

It’s only when he gets off the bus that he realizes that he still doesn’t know which hospital Todd is in. The one the bus took them to looks familiar enough, but that might just be because all hospitals more or less look the same.

When he asks at the reception desk, they tell him that Mr. Brotzman is on the neurological floor, room 402. Thinking about it, he really should’ve known that he’s in the right place. He usually is, after all.

As he heads for the lifts, Oswald takes his arm.

“This is where I leave you.”

“Oh?” Dirk looks up. “But—you said you’d help. Or, well, Rhoswen did. Won’t you have to come up for that?”

“She will. I will guide her.”

“You will—guide her.”

“That is what I am. I am the dragon’s guide. I guided you, now I am going to guide her.”

The dragon’s guide. Right. “Not a cousin, then.”

The lift dings. “I, uh. I have to go, actually.” Dirk points at the lift. “Will you find the room? Would you like my number? I don’t know if I know it, because it’s new—not that I knew my old one. I think it’s saved somewhere in the phone, though.”

Oswald smiles an enigmatic smile. “We will find you, Dirk Gently.”

“Right.”

The lift’s doors start closing, so Dirk waves to Oswald and quickly jumps in. As the doors seal shut, he hopes to God that this wasn’t the last he’s seen of him.

The neurological floor branches off the fourth floor hallway to the right. Above the white swing doors, there’s a big label, white letters on grey. Dirk’s never sure if he’s actually allowed to just wander about in hospitals; they look so much like a Blackwing facility that he always half-expects a frowny military guy to show up and take him back to his cell.

As he enters the ward, nobody pays him any attention. The hallway is long and dimly lit, the grey-marbled linoleum swallowing the light from the fluorescent neon tubes fixed to the ceiling. He passes the nurse’s station, where two nurses are busy with their charts. Room 402 is in the back on the left.

Unsure of hospital visitor protocol, he knocks. There’s shuffling in the room, something being knocked over. The door opens by a small gap, and Tina peers through.

“Dirk!” The gap quickly widens, and Tina flings her arms around his neck. Dirk, not a little startled, staggers back before he finds his balance and returns the hug.

“Hello, Tina.” The greeting’s too loud in the quiet corridor, so he immediately lowers his voice. “Hey. Are you all right?”

“I dunno, man.” Tina steps back, awkwardly pats her thighs. “I haven’t slept all night, and I just hate hospitals, man. Never know if I’m actually better till I’m out the door, and that’s even when I’m not the one who’s sick.”

“Right.” Dirk makes a mental note to ask her at some point if she’s stayed in hospital often. “How’s—” He motions at the door. Tina steps aside.

“Head on in. See for yourself.” She motions like a hotel concierge. “I’ll just—I’ll go get myself a coffee or something, I think. I been up all night. As mentioned.”

Dirk nods. He grabs the door knob, and wills his hand to stay steady.

Entering the room is really fairly anticlimactic. There is no barrage of machines next to the bed, and the one monitor that’s mounted on the wall doesn’t even beep. A single IV line runs from the bottle hanging on the stand down and underneath the sheet. Dirk lets his eyes travel up, over a hospital-green blanket to a shoulder clad in a hospital-blue gown. Eventually, they settle on Todd’s face.

Todd’s asleep. His hair looks flat and sad, sticks to his forehead in curls that got drenched with sweat and later cooled out and dried. His lips are pale and chapped, and even as he’s sleeping, the lines around his mouth seem unhappy. Not that it’s all that different to his normal scowl, but still. Dirk swallows.

“Hey, Todd.”

There’s a rickety plastic chair next to the bed. Dirk’s about to perch on the edge when Todd’s eyes open. “Dirk.”

Dirk lets out a startled laugh, stays on his feet and steps closer. “Todd! Hello, Todd.” He’d like to touch, but all of Todd below his shoulders is covered by the ugly green sheet. He rests his hands on the edge of the bed instead. “How are you feeling?”

“Like crap.” Todd’s voice is hoarse, his pupils dilated. Despite his words, his mouth pulls into a smile. “You solve the case?”

“I did, actually.” Dirk returns the smile. He feels a little guilty at how pleased he is about Todd, in his current state, asking about the case first thing. “This one really didn’t need much solving, I just—I ended up being where I needed to be for everything to work out.”

“Good.” The sheet lifts a little, and Todd’s hand sneaks out. There’s a bendy IV tube taped to the back of it. Todd’s fingers reach for Dirk’s, and he clasps his hand around Todd’s.

He’s not sure if he’s imagining it, but he feels like the frown lines on Todd’s forehead smooth out a bit.

“You get through it all right?” Todd’s eyelids flutter. “No harpoons in your shoulder?”

“Nope!” With his free hand, Dirk gestures at his shoulder, which is thankfully wholly unpenetrated by metal bars or other things. “I did burn my fingers, though.” He holds his fingers out for Todd to see the angry red blisters that have formed on the tips.

Todd purses his lips in sympathy. “Could be worse.”

“Yes. Has been worse, in fact. As cases go, this one didn’t end too badly.” Dirk clears his throat. “For me, that is.”

Without letting go of Todd’s hand, he pulls the chair over, sits down. Todd’s fingers move against his. “Apparently I’m baffling the neurologists,” he says, the dryness in his voice not quite managing to mask the tremor in it. “They said they’ve never seen anything like this. Longest pararibulitis attack in the books so far was thirty minutes. I broke their record.”

“But—” Dirk frowns, scrutinizes Todd’s face. “You’re not having an attack right now, do you?”

“Mhm,” Todd says and nods. “They gave me—something. Some stuff. It’s blocking the pain and the hallucinations, but just—superficially. I don’t know. They explained it to me, but I was really high. All I know is that once I go off of whatever it is, the attack will start up again proper.”

Dirk wets his lips, squeezes Todd’s hand. Looks down at their clasped fingers. “I’m not hurting you, though, am I? Should I not be touching you?”

“No!” Todd’s hand tightens. “I mean, yes. This is fine. You’re not hurting me. All I can feel right now is, like, tingling.”

“Okay. Good.” Dirk clears his throat. Todd’s hand just feels normal in his palm, no indication that the nerves under Todd’s skin are on the verge of misfiring and causing gruesome amounts of pain. He rubs his thumb over the back of it. “I think I may have found someone who can help you.”

“What?”

“The case. The—hm.” He frowns, tries to find the best way to explain this without having to explain everything that happened. “You know how I thought I’d developed speed-healing?”

“Sure.”

“I hadn’t.” He ignores the twist of Todd’s lips that says ‘told you so’. “I was being healed by the cat.”

“The what?”

“The cat. She’s actually a dragon.”

Todd stares at him. Dirk watches his pupils pull together slowly. “The cat you were hiding is a dragon?”

“I wasn’t hiding her.”

“Why did she give us the guitar?”

“I—don’t actually know.” He frowns. That’s one of the few unanswered questions that remain. He tries to empty his mind, let the answer come to him from the mass of information that he received from Rhoswen earlier. But he remains clueless. “Perhaps—she likes music? She’s quite opinionated.”

Todd harrumphs. “I knew that before I knew she was a dragon. Does she talk?”

“Um—sort of? She more, like, thinks.”

“Thinks?” Todd squints. “What, like, telepathy?”

“I suppose you could call it that. She’s only done it to me, though. Farah couldn’t hear her.”

“Right.” Todd’s eyeing him with a “you’re weird”-look that makes Dirk feel a little self-conscious. It’s as if Todd realizes it’s doing that, though, because he stops before long and squeezes his hand. “So she’s got healing powers?”

“All dragons do, apparently. Well, the ones of her kind. It’s why Mr. Boyd captured them—”

“Who’s Mr. Boyd?”

“The bad guy. Well.” Dirk frowns, wrinkles his nose as a memory of the smell of burning flesh ghosts past. “He was the bad guy. He’s dead now.”

“Right. And he captured dragons? How?”

“I—” Perhaps there are more questions left unanswered than he initially thought. Dirk pulls up his shoulders. “He was harvesting their healing powers to make money off of them. He founded Arach Meds, the people who—”

“—gave me the new pills. Shit.” Todd shifts, grimaces. “Knew those were too good to be true.”

“I’m sorry.” Dirk watches Todd’s face, notices the small twitch of Todd’s lips, the way his eyes slide off to the side and avoid direct eye contact. Todd’s hiding his disappointment, as he would. Dirk puts his other hand over Todd’s. “I know you wanted them to work. I did, too. And they almost did, they just—” He frowns. “I think the dragons’ healing powers are a bit like—flowers. Once you remove them from their source of nourishment, they don’t last for very long.”

Todd nods, his fingers shifting between Dirk’s. “Are my normal meds going to work again?”

“I think so?” Todd looks up, his eyes wide, and Dirk quickly adds, “Yes! Yes, of course. Rhoswen—the dragon. The cat. She’ll heal you, and—things will be back to normal. Like they were before. Promise.”

Todd stares at him. His lips twitch, and he snorts. “Jesus, Dirk. When it comes to reassuring people, you are literally the worst.”

“I—”

“It’s fine.” Todd shifts, sneaks his free hand out from under the blanket to reach for the remote on the nightstand. “Want to watch some TV?”

“Yes.” Dirk glances at the screen mounted to the wall in the corner. It’s quite small, but the channel list taped next to it looks like they at least have a decent number of options to choose from. “Try channel number 43. Last time I was here, they had quite a good selection of crime dramas.”

Twisting his head to see the TV gives Dirk a crick in his neck, so before long, Todd scoots over to make space next to him in the bed. Dirk kicks off his shoes, snuggles under the blanket, and puts an arm around Todd’s shoulders. It earns him a mild glare, but as it’s accompanied by a smile, Dirk takes it as approval Todd Brotzman style and is pleased about it.

Miss Marple on the TV takes a total sixty-eight minutes longer to solve the case than Dirk does (granted, he’s seen the episode before), so when his eyes start drooping, he doesn’t fight it.

\------

He wakes up to a soft paw patting his cheek.

“Wha—” 

Rhoswen is watching him with a serene, jade-coloured stare.

_Your friend is healed._

“He—” Dirk props himself up. “He is?” He looks over at Todd, who’s also fallen asleep. His face looks relaxed—much more so, actually, than it does even on a normal day. “Are you sure?”

Rhoswen doesn’t grace that with an answer, just turns away and makes as if to jump off the bed. Dirk reaches out. “Wait!”

Todd lets out a small snore at the noise. Rhoswen throws a look over her shoulder, and Dirk lowers his voice. “What about my other friend? He’s—will you help him too?”

_Oswald will guide me._

Dirk feels a note of resentment in her reply. He opens his mouth, squints. “Yes, okay. But—what does that actually mean?”

She doesn’t answer, just sends a sense of reprimand—don’t be so nosy. Dirk holds up his hands. “Fair enough.” He clears his throat, pauses as he seeks for words. “Thank you, Rhoswen. For helping me. For helping Todd. I know you didn’t have to.”

Her ears flick. She glances at Todd. _Make him teach you the stringy instrument, she says. It will strengthen your love._

“It will—what?” Dirk looks at Todd, but Todd’s still asleep. “Do you mean the guitar?” A sudden realization makes his eyes widen. “Is that why you had us find it? Like a Cupid sort of thing, were you trying to—”

He’s interrupted by the thump of Rhoswen jumping to the floor. She pads over to the door, which opens as if on command. Oswald’s outside, looking like he’s been waiting there.

Dirk waves, gives Oswald a bit of an awkward smile. He has so many questions still, but neither Oswald nor Rhoswen look like they’ve got time for them, or patience. Oswald scoops Rhoswen up, and she sits on his arm like a queen in her sedan chair.

“We will help your friend,” Oswald says. “After that, you will not see us again.” He’s about to turn away, then stops. “You’d do best to stay silent about the existence of our kind,” he says. “Humans who do not usually meet with a premature end.”

Dirk opens his mouth, words stuck in his throat. “Right,” he says eventually. “That’s a good thing to know. Thanks for the warning.”

_Goodbye, Dirk Gently._

“Goodbye.” He says it quietly to a closing door.

Next to him, Todd shifts and makes a grunting sound.

“Goodbye to who?”

“Todd! You’re awake.” Dirk smiles. “How are you feeling?”

“I—” Todd frowns, eyes still groggy from sleep. He raises his hands, stares at them for a few moments. Curls them to loose fists which he then tightens. “The tingling’s gone,” he says eventually.

The weight that slips off Dirk’s shoulders could’ve crushed a rhinoceros. He throws his arms out to his side and whoops with joy, flings himself around Todd’s neck. “Rhoswen did it,” he says, can’t help grinning from ear to ear. Todd seems momentarily startled, but then hugs him back.

“Rhoswen did what?”

“She healed you.” Dirk sticks his nose into the crook of Todd’s neck and shoulder, breathes in Todd’s scent and presses a kiss to a patch of warm skin there. “Everything should be back to normal now.”

Todd hums at the peck, a quiet sound deep in his chest. He nudges his chin against the side of Dirk’s head, then his nose against Dirk’s cheek, until Dirk’s pulled back far enough for Todd to press their lips together.

It’s different than their last kiss. Todd’s skin is warm, not cold from the rain. His lips are dry from his ordeal. He smells faintly of hospital disinfectant. But when they break apart, it’s a normal, natural way to end a kiss, not a sudden interruption. Todd’s smiling, and Dirk can’t help a giddy, fluttery feeling in his chest.

“What do you say about us getting out of here as quickly as possible? I’ve spent enough time in hospitals to last me for a lifetime.”

\------

Dirk opens his fridge. It’s fully stocked for the first time in what must be months: milk and cheese and lunch meat, veggies in the veggie drawer, drinks and juice and what Dirk would call too many condiments. Dirk went shopping with Todd. Todd is a condiments guy.

Dirk grabs two of the beers and one of the wine spritzers and returns to where Farah and Todd are sprawled on the couch in the sitting room. He hands the beers over and drops down next to Todd before he twists the cap off of his own drink.

“To a successfully concluded case.”

Their bottles clink together. Dirk takes a sip and lets himself fall back into the pillows.

“Tina wrote another message,” says Farah. She lights up her phone to read it out. “So glad u—” She interrupts herself to mutter, “She wrote ‘u’, not ‘you’; why do people still do that, it’s not like the phone doesn’t spell it out for you.” before she continues, “—so glad you guys saved Hobbs, but couldn’t you have kept your mouth shut about the dragons, I’m scared to have a drink now ‘cos I’m def. telling folks about the dragons when I’m drunk.”

“Oh, great.” Todd snorts. “Now she’s put it on WhatsApp. By tomorrow, the entirety of Russia will know.”

“I really don’t think it’s that critical.” Dirk’s not sure how true that is. Oswald’s threat seemed pretty serious, and Rhoswen definitely has no qualms about killing people. But there’s nothing they can do about it, so it seems pointless to worry. “Unless we actively go out and sell the story to a newspaper, I don’t think talking about dragons now and again will put us in any danger.”

“They didn’t stay hidden for centuries by being lenient about this sort of thing,” Farah says. “Honestly, I don’t even know how they stayed hidden at all. Didn’t Rhoswen say that the drakes live as people most of the time?”

“Pretty effective way to stay hidden, if you ask me.” Todd’s shoulder is pressing against Dirk’s. As he speaks, he leans a little closer. It’s oh-so-incidental, but Dirk makes it less so by putting his arm around Todd. It earns him a small sideways glare, but Dirk is happy to ignore it.

“I’d really like to know what Mr. Boyd was thinking,” he says, rubs a thumb over the rough fabric of Todd’s sweater. “Kidnapping scientists, holding dragons captive, and using an army of infamously unreliable and shockingly incapable mercenaries to control it all? Seems like bad planning to me.”

“Cost-effective resource employment. Same reason the Perryman Grand hired me when I was a college drop-out with a three-year gap in my resume.” Todd raises his bottle in a self-deprecating toast. “Cheaper to employ folks who know nothing and make them learn on the job than paying for skilled workers. The guy who hired me actually explained that to me when he told me I had the job.”

“Well, that’s awful.” Dirk tightens his embrace a little and is pleased when Todd leans more firmly against him. “The more American entrepreneurs I meet, the more I get the impression that being an American entrepreneur doesn’t require as much intelligence as the myth seems to suggest.”

“Intelligence, sure,” says Farah. “Common sense?” She squints, tilts her hand back and forth to indicate doubt. “I had a lot of respect for Patrick, but he was absolutely the sort of man who’d build a steampunk suit of armour to defeat his enemies instead of, say, hiring a hitman.” She frowns. “Though even he probably wouldn’t have hired the drakes, if their reputation is really as bad as Oswald said.”

“What I still don’t get is what they needed the stolen phones for.” Todd twists his head, peers up at Dirk. “You said the dragon had them in her lair. Why? She was being held captive. Why give her a hoard?”

It makes perfect sense to Dirk, but it takes him a moment to figure out why. “It’s like—a nest. Or a hive, I suppose.” He frowns. The information he got from Rhoswen is still largely vague and non-verbal. Anything he hasn’t tried to explain to someone else yet he needs to slowly put into communicable words. “If you want bees to produce honey, you have to give them a hive. If you want dragons to produce—healy stuff—you have to give them a hoard. They’re not bees, but in that respect—perhaps they are, a little.”

“But phones?” Todd squints, dubious. “Why not—gold, or pearls, or the sort of stuff a dragon would be hoarding in a fairy tale?”

“It’s—”

“—treasure,” Farah finishes his sentence. “Why do dragons in fairy tales hoard gold? Not because they need it. They never do anything with it. They hoard it because it’s what’s treasured by the people in the fairy tale. People nowadays—they treasure their gadgets and designer clothes. Their new iPhone, their new Louis Vuitton scarf. Even more so if it’s a brand new, shiny item that got stolen. There must be—energy in that, if something’s so coveted and yearned for. Is that—” She hesitates, unsure all of a sudden, and glances at Dirk. “Is that it? Or am I way off here?”

“I think you’re pretty spot-on.” Dirk watches Farah, amazed that someone like her would spend her time with someone like him. She’s so much smarter than he will ever be. “I think the dragons—they’re not like me, they don’t get hunches. And they’re not like the Rowdy 3, they don’t suck emotional energy out of people. But—they’re something.”

“They’re connected?”

“Exactly.” Dirk smiles, clinks his bottle against Todd’s. “They’re connected, and they can use the—flow or the energy or whatever to manipulate things around them. To heal, for example.”

“Man.” Todd shakes his head. “That’d be such a useful power to have. You’d save so much in co-pays.” He frowns. “You could _make_ so much in co-pays. If you charged people for a round of super-healing—”

“ _Todd_!” Dirk shakes his head. “That is exactly what Mr. Boyd was thinking, and he ended up burnt to a crisp on the floor of his mountain factory. There’s a lesson in that, you know?”

“Oh yeah?” A small smile plays about Todd’s lips, and he leans more into Dirk’s side, tilts his head back against Dirk’s shoulder to meet his eyes. “What lesson is that, then?”

“That you can’t—control—” Todd’s mouth is very distracting. He’s showing a tiny glimpse of tongue as he curls it against his lower lip. Long eyelashes brush over his cheeks as he blinks. Dirk clears his throat. “What I meant to say is that you shouldn’t try to control—”

“Look at the time,” says Farah. She gathers up her jacket and shrugs it on. “I should get going. I’ll see you guys tomorrow at the agency?”

“Always.” Dirk thinks he should probably extricate himself, walk her to the door. He makes a reluctant attempt to wriggle out from under Todd (who’s at this point actually more lying on top than leaning against him) when Farah holds up her hands.

“It’s fine, Dirk. It’s fine. I’ll find my way out.”

“Right.” Dirk nods, gives her a warm smile that hopefully shows every ounce of deeply felt Farah appreciation he has within him. “See you tomorrow.”

Todd gives her a goodbye wave, too, and then she’s gone with a soft click of the front door. The room stays silent for a while, the only sounds the muffled noise from the street outside. Dirk feels Todd relax more against him, and experimentally slides the tips of his fingers into Todd’s dark curls.

Todd doesn’t protest, so Dirk continues to play with his hair, straightening out strands just to watch them bounce back into a soft spiral as he lets them go. Curly hair is the best.

“So are you, like, full-on properly gay?”

The question comes out as a bit of a non-sequitur, apropos of nothing while Dirk’s still thinking about whether or not Todd would be amenable to the idea of letting his hair grow long. He blinks, lets his hand settle against the back of Todd’s head. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry, I mean—it’s not like it matters.” Todd shifts, and it feels like he wants to pull away, so Dirk tightens his embrace and prevents that. Todd sags back against his side willingly enough. “I guess I was just wondering. ‘cos I’m not, but I’m—you know. Experienced. Both—ways.”

Dirk purses his lips, restarts his fussing with Todd’s hair and tries to remember if he’s ever had this conversation with anyone before. “I’m not—” He clears his throat. “I’m not used to discussing this with others. My, um. My preferences, if you will. Or my experiences. There was never anyone I could’ve told about it. Except Riggins, perhaps, but there were many reasons why that would’ve been a bad idea.”

“Riggins?” Todd squints. “Wasn’t he the CIA guy who kept you locked up?”

“He was—” A lot of things. Captor. Confidant. Father figure. Traitor. Dirk sucks in a breath, clears his throat. “It doesn’t matter. Point is, I never talk about any of this because I’m not used to being able to. Not because I’m trying to be secretive.”

“All right.” Now Todd does pull away, but just enough so he can turn around and meet Dirk’s eyes without having to crane his neck. “So I can ask questions?”

Dirk can’t help it when his eyes shift to the side. “You—certainly can, yes.”

Todd’s lips thin out. “But it remains to be seen if you’ll answer them.”

“Well, can I ask questions?” Dirk meets Todd’s eyes again, raises his eyebrows. “You’re not exactly an open book yourself, Todd. You hit me when I introduced myself to your sister.”

“That was just because—”

“You didn’t want me to know your sister?”

“No!” Todd frowns, shrugs. “Or, well, yes. At the time. Didn’t exactly stop you, though.”

Dirk smiles a little, can’t help but touch Todd’s hair again. It’s just very touchable hair. “To answer your question, I’m not—‘full-on properly gay’, as you put it. My first experiences were, just because, well—Blackwing is a fairly male-dominated space. The only female person my age who was around was Mona, and Mona isn’t—she’s—” Dirk clears his throat, feels his ears grow hot.

Todd peers at him through narrowed eyes. “You’ve had sex with Mona?”

“Well—Mona’s idea of—that—is turning into a, well, a toy. You know. _That_ kind of toy. Which—they’re not widely available in Blackwing, so that’s—not—it’s not that I was protesting, it’s just that—I—”

“Oh my God, Dirk.” Todd’s laughing. He clambers up to swing a leg over Dirk’s thighs and straddle his lap. “You are going to give yourself a hernia. You’re redder than your red jacket.”

The sudden lapful of Todd distracts Dirk enough to help him regain his composure. He laughs a little, too, puts his hands on Todd’s waist. Todd’s wearing a frayed button-down and loose jeans. Dirk can feel the waistband of his boxers underneath his shirt. “Well, as I mentioned,” he says, keeps his eyes on Todd’s chest, lets them wander up to the hollow of his throat which sits between the gap left by two open buttons. “I have never had the chance to talk about this with anyone.”

“Would you like to?” Todd’s hand settles against the side of his jaw, fingertips run along his jawline. Todd’s thumb brushes against Dirk’s lower lip. Dirk can feel heat pool in the bottom of his gut. “You can look at me, you know.”

“Ah—” Dirk raises his eyes, takes in Todd’s stubble and wonders how it’s going to feel against his lips. When he meets Todd’s gaze, Todd’s eyes are improbably huge and even bluer than normal. “I’d really rather just kiss you right now, if that’s—”

He’s interrupted by Todd’s mouth on his. Todd’s hand slides back into his hair, guides him to tilt his head back, which Dirk does only too willingly. He shudders as Todd’s tongue slides into his mouth, and pulls Todd closer.

“You okay?” It’s a breathless question as Todd interrupts the kiss for a moment to get some air. Dirk can’t help but ask it, in the back of his mind the memory of the kiss in the shopping gallery, the shock of Todd suddenly pulling away and screaming in pain—

“Shut up.” Dirk startles as Todd pinches his lower lip one between his teeth, sends another warm shudder down his spine. “I’m fine.”

“Good.” He can feel himself smiling, a giddy feeling of excitement spreading out from his stomach. “You know, this is great, Todd.” He says it as Todd mouths the side of his jaw, presses a kiss to the side of his neck just underneath his ear. “This is really good, I’m really enjoying this. I’m really enjoying _you_.”

“I’ve barely done anything.”

Dirk can hear the smirk in Todd’s voice, can feel a blush rising up from his neck again. “Well, while this isn’t my first, or even my second or third experience, I will say that it’s been a while since— _oh_!”

A hand’s settled between his legs. It’s Todd’s, obviously, Todd is cupping a hand over the crotch of Dirk’s trousers which over the past few minutes have grown almost unbearably tight. The added pressure of Todd’s palm makes Dirk’s breath snag in his throat. He turns his head, meets Todd’s eyes, but his words are stuck as well.

Todd’s smiling, fondness and uncertainty in his eyes. “Is this okay?”

Dirk tries to answer but can’t. He doesn’t know if it’s okay. It’s _good_ , but it’s—

“Sorry.” Todd’s smile disappears, and he pulls his hand back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“No!” Dirk grabs Todd’s wrist, maybe a little too hard. Todd’s eyes widen, and Dirk clears his throat. “No, I mean—yes. It’s okay. It’s not—no apologies are necessary.”

Todd narrows his eyes. “You didn’t look like you thought it was okay.”

“It’s—” Oh, God. Dirk struggles to sit up a little, which is helped by Todd shifting some weight onto his knees until Dirk’s managed to correct his slump. Dirk wets his lips, takes both of Todd’s hands and meets his eyes as he speaks. “I feel everything—very strongly. You know that. So—this sort of thing is—”

“Too much?”

He can tell that Todd is trying not to show his disappointment, but Dirk can still spot it. He shakes his head. “Not necessarily. It all depends on the pace.”

“Right.” Todd nods. “You’re not a guy to put out on the first date, is what you’re saying.”

“Right. Yes. Sort of.” Dirk squints. That hasn’t always been true, but he’s quite sure it should have been. “I just—I don’t want to accidentally spoil it, you know? By rushing into things. That happens to me often enough outside of—well. Romance.”

Todd blinks, laughs a little. He shakes his head and starts to clamber off of Dirk’s lap. Dirk’s about to tell him not to—just because he doesn’t want to do _that_ yet doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to be touching at all—when Todd pulls Dirk’s arm around his shoulders again and snuggles against his side. “You’re surprisingly mature about this stuff.”

“Are you implying that I’m not mature about other things?” The warmth of Todd’s body against his side is almost as pleasing as being kissed by Todd, and it’s definitely kinder to his blood pressure. Dirk pulls him a little closer, and Todd snorts.

“I would never.”

“At least my flat isn’t in a complete state of disarray.” That’s a marker of maturity, right, keeping your place somewhat tidy. Which Todd’s hasn’t been in a long time. “Why haven’t you cleaned up your place at the Ridgley yet, anyway?”

Todd groans, sticks his face into the side of Dirk’s chest. “I don’t know. I don’t really like going there anymore. It feels like a past-me place, not a now-me place. Also, there’s the drug cartel stuff. Makes it a bit unsafe.”

Dirk purses his lips. Todd’s concerns sound reasonable enough. Reinventing yourself requires a certain reinvention of your environment as well. Dirk knows that from experience. “Would you like to move in here?”

Todd sits up, stares at him. “In here? With you?”

“That’s sort of the idea, yes.” Todd seems disproportionally surprised, so Dirk squints. “Is there something wrong with it?”

“You’re not going to have sex on the first date, but you’re going to suggest moving in together.”

“Well—” Put like that, Dirk gets where Todd’s surprise is coming from. “It’s not like that, though. I _know_ you, after all. And you know me. We’re not complete strangers. And we’d be able to save quite a bit on rent if we split this place between the two of us. It’s already cheap, and as a shared flat, it’d be even cheaper.”

“Can’t say no to a cheap apartment in Seattle.” Todd’s tone is dry, but he immediately follows it with a warm smile and a peck on Dirk’s cheek. “All right. Are you a bed-sharer or am I taking the couch?”

“We can share the bed. Have you _seen_ that bed?” Dirk widens his eyes in emphasis. “It came with the apartment, and it’s _huge_. You could fit five people into it comfortably.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Definitely not. Would you like to see it?”

“Please.”

Dirk gets up, holds out a hand. Todd takes it, smirking. As he gets up, his shirt rides up a little to expose a glimpse of bare skin. Involuntarily, Dirk moistens his lips as his eyes linger.

“Are you ogling me?”

“Am not.” Dirk clears his throat, snaps up his eyes. “Do you want to see the bed, then?”

“Lead the way.”

And that’s what he does. For once, he even knows where he’s going.


End file.
